


The Way It Was Supposed to Be

by hannasus



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Crime Fighting, Drama, Established Relationship, F/M, Kidnapping, Memory Loss, Mind Manipulation, Near Future, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-05-21 16:12:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6057778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannasus/pseuds/hannasus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>QUEEN INC. CEO DISAPPEARS NIGHT BEFORE WEDDING</b>
</p><p>The FBI and Star City Police are investigating the disappearance of Queen Inc. CEO Felicity Smoak, who was last seen on the night before her wedding. Smoak, 28, disappeared mysteriously from her penthouse apartment in midtown, sometime after midnight Friday.</p><p>Smoak planned to get married on Saturday to former playboy Oliver Queen, who launched a failed bid for the mayor’s office last year. According to SCPD spokeswoman Sameena Patel, Queen has been cooperating with investigators. “There’s not a worry about” his possible involvement in her disappearance, Patel said.</p><p>Queen is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of Smoak. Anyone with information is urged to call the FBI hotline for the investigation at 1-877-555-1950.</p><p>(Excerpted from <i>The Star City Sentinel,</i> June 13, 2017)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tremendous thanks to machaswicket for betaing and cheerleading, and for asking me to me to write something plotty for Arrow in the first place. :)

Felicity was naked. Oliver was too, but that was beside the point.

All that Oliver cared about at this particular moment was that Felicity was in his arms, naked. Her head resting on his chest and her body curled around his. In their bed. In their _home._

He’d be perfectly happy to stay here like this—just _exactly_ like this—forever.

But it was getting late. He needed to leave soon.

“I can’t believe that was our last time,” Felicity sighed.

His arms instinctively tightened around her. “What?”

“I mean, not our _last time_ last time,” she amended. “Just our last time before we’re married.”

Oliver pressed a kiss into the top of her head, smiling at the sound of the word. _Married._ That’s what they’d be, after tomorrow.

Felicity’s fingers trailed an abstract path across his chest, weaving in between his scars. “Do you think the sex will feel different after tomorrow?” she asked.

He thought about it. “I think it’ll be even better.”

“Really?” She sounded skeptical.

“Really.”

“You won’t feel trapped? Doomed to have boring married sex with the same person for all of eternity?”

Oliver’s brow knit. “Are you seriously asking me that question?”

Felicity smacked him on the chest, laughing. “No! I’m pretty sure there’s never been a man as eager to get married as you in the whole history of ever. You’ve got the opposite of cold feet, your feet are blazing hot—hot to get married, that is.”

“Hey.” Oliver tipped her chin up, so he could see her face. “Are _you_ having cold feet?”

She met his gaze evenly. “Of course not.”

He searched her face for the truth—she could be almost as good at bottling up her emotions as he was sometimes.

“Oliver,” she said sincerely, “there are no cold feet here.” She wriggled her bare toes against his shins for emphasis. “I can’t wait to be married to you. Okay?”

He exhaled. “Okay.”

She craned her neck for a kiss before laying her head back down on his chest. A piece of her hair caught in his stubble and tickled his chin. He didn’t bother brushing it away.

“I should probably go,” he said after another minute.

Felicity lifted her head again. “What? No!”

“We talked about this,” he reminded her.

“I know, but … I didn’t think you were serious about it.”

“I told you I was.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you were _seriously_ serious.”

Oliver sighed. “Felicity—”

“How can you be so old-fashioned about this? After everything we’ve been through together, what possible difference can one night make?”

He brushed her hair back from her face. “It’s _because_ of everything we’ve been through. We’ve fought so hard to get here, I don’t want to tempt fate. I want tomorrow to be perfect.”

“Since when are you so superstitious?”

“It’s not just superstition,” Oliver said. “It’s about honoring tradition.”

Her lower lip pushed out in a pout. “It’s a stupid tradition.”

Oliver brought her hand to his lips and kissed the engagement ring he’d put on her finger for the first time over a year ago.

(And for the second time in a hospital room a few terrible days later.)

(And for the third time three months ago, after one of the most difficult periods they’d ever weathered together—but they _had_ weathered it, and now they were here. Finally.)

“The first time I see you on our wedding day,” he told her solemnly, “I want it to be when you’re walking down the aisle toward me. Okay?”

Felicity sighed with faux exasperation. “Why do you have to be so romantic? I can’t even be annoyed that you’re making me sleep alone tonight.”

“Just this one last time,” he pointed out. “After tonight, we’ll be together forever.”

“Mmmm,” she said, smiling up at him. “I like the sound of that.”

He slid his fingers into her hair and pulled her face toward his. He kissed her tenderly, savoring the taste, before he shifted her gently off of him and sat up.

She caught him by the wrist. “You don’t have to go _yet,_ do you?”

It was tempting to linger, but … “It’s almost midnight,” he said. “And we’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“Fine.” She released him and curled onto her side, tucking her hands beneath her head.

“What time are Thea and Lyla coming in the morning?” he asked, stooping to retrieve his pants from the floor.

“Nine o’clock,” Felicity said, making a face. “We’re having breakfast before the marathon of hair and nails and makeup begins.”

“You know, I offered to elope to Bali,” Oliver said as he pulled his shirt over his head. “We could have gotten married barefoot on the beach, but you wanted a big fancy wedding with all our friends and family.”

“We _both_ wanted a big fancy wedding with all our friends and family,” she reminded him. “And nothing else about our relationship has ever been normal—I figured we should at least do this one thing the normal way.”

He shrugged. “It’s not too late to elope, is all I’m saying. I honestly don’t care how we get married tomorrow, as long we’re married by the end of the day. I’ll meet you at a chapel in Vegas if you want.”

Felicity snorted. “My mother would _kill_ me. She’d kill _both_ of us.”

Oliver sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on his shoes. “Then I guess we’re stuck with our big, beautiful, traditional wedding.”

Felicity reached over and squeezed his thigh. “I’m gonna have the cutest husband of all time.”

He twisted around and dropped a kiss on her lips. “And I’m gonna have the hottest wife.”

“Mmmm, c’mere.” Her hand curled into the front of his shirt, pulling him in for a longer kiss.

When they parted her eyes were glistening. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, reaching up to cup her cheek.

She leaned into his touch and shook her head. “Nothing. I just hate saying goodbye to you.”

He pressed his forehead against hers and brushed a hand through her hair. “It’s not a goodbye, it’s the start of our new life together.”

She nodded, smiling. “We’re getting married tomorrow.”

“Yeah, we are.” He kissed her one last time, his lips lingering on hers. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she told him, eyes still gleaming.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay, Mrs. Queen?”

She nodded again. “Okay, Mr. Smoak.”

Oliver grabbed the suitcase he’d packed for the honeymoon, and the garment bag with his wedding tux inside, and made his way downstairs. He turned out all the lights and then paused, just outside the front door, looking back in at the loft.

The next time he crossed this threshold, he’d be carrying Felicity over it.

A new start. A new life. All his dreams come true. _Tomorrow._

He locked the door behind him and drove over to Thea’s to spend his last night as a single man.

✥ ✥ ✥

Oliver was awake before dawn the next morning, like a kid on Christmas morning.

He stayed in bed, watching the darkness resolve into daylight, before getting up and slipping on his running shoes.

Thea was already in the shower when Oliver let himself out of her apartment. She’d be heading over to Felicity’s soon to start the pre-wedding preparations, but there wasn’t as much for the groom to do on the wedding day. He had hours yet to kill before Diggle showed up to drive him to the ceremony. Hours to kill and an excess of nervous energy to burn.

Not that he was nervous. Not about marrying Felicity, anyway.

He was more nervous about the ceremony itself, and the reception. There were approximately five hundred things that could go wrong, and he wanted everything to be perfect. They’d come through so much to get here, he just wanted to give Felicity the perfect wedding she deserved.

Oliver’s feet slapped against the pavement as he weaved his way through the streets of Thea’s neighborhood. It was still quiet, this early on a Saturday morning. Only himself and few other early risers were out and about. He nodded at woman jogging past in pink tights, her brown ponytail bouncing behind her.

The breeze off the bay was already chasing away the marine layer and the sun was starting to poke through the clouds. It was going to be bright and sunny today. Perfect weather for their perfect day.

“Morning,” Oliver called out a few minutes later as he dodged around a dad pushing two little kids in a jog stroller.

That could be him one day, he thought as he rounded the next corner, heading for the jogging path that wound through the park.

It wasn’t the sort of thing he ever used to allow himself to hope for. But things had been better lately. Quieter.

Crime was down since they’d gotten rid of Damian Darhk and his Ghosts. The DA’s office was cracking down on what was left of organized crime (which wasn’t a lot, since Darhk had helpfully eliminated most of the competition). The new mayor had cleaned up the SPCD and put more uniformed officers on the streets.

The city was getting safer all on its own. It didn’t need the Green Arrow as much as it used to.

Maybe … maybe it’d actually stay that way. Maybe he could even hang up the hood eventually. Retire. Have a normal life.

And maybe in a year or two he and Felicity could talk seriously about having kids.

The gravel path crunched under Oliver’s feet as he rolled the idea around in his head. It felt like a luxury, even being able to consider it. But why shouldn’t they?

Things were going better than ever at the newly rechristened Queen Incorporated. Earnings were up. Felicity had the trust of the board, a strong team of officers and VPs working under her. The R&D department was practically running itself these days. She could start cutting her hours back if she needed to.

And Oliver … what would he do? If he wasn’t the Green Arrow?

Felicity had mentioned more than once the possibility of putting him to work at QI. Maybe even a spot on the board. He knew she’d love for him to be more involved in the company, but the thought of it didn’t excite him.

As he pounded over a wooden footbridge he thought back to those months they’d spent in Ivy Town. It seemed so long ago it felt almost unreal, like something remembered from a dream. He’d been happy, living their quiet, domestic life. He’d go back to it in a heartbeat.

But now maybe they could do it here, in Star City. Felicity could keep doing the work that she loved, and he could stay home and take care of her—and their kids.

Oliver Queen, stay-at-home-dad. The thought of it brought a smile to his face.

His phone buzzed and he slowed to a walk, fishing it out of his pocket. It was Thea.

“What’d you forget?” he asked, answering it. She probably wanted him to bring her something she’d forgotten at home. Some special brush or lipstick or curling iron, maybe. He just hoped she hadn’t forgotten her bridesmaid’s dress, because Felicity would—

“Ollie.”

He could tell by the way she said his name that something wasn’t right. “What’s wrong?” he asked, chest tightening.

“Have you heard from Felicity this morning?”

Oliver came to dead stop in the middle of the trail. “No. We’re not supposed to talk until the wedding.”

“Lyla and I are at the loft, and Felicity’s not here.”

“What? What do you mean?” The words Thea was saying didn’t make any sense. Felicity was at home where he’d left her last night. She had to be.

“The loft’s empty,” Thea said. “The door was locked and her purse is on the counter where she always leaves it, but she’s not here.”

“Maybe …” Oliver cast about for an explanation. “Maybe she went out to run an errand. Or into the office.”

“Without her wallet or her keycard?”

“She could have forgotten it.”

“Her car’s still here, Ollie. And Lyla already checked with QI security—she hasn’t been in since yesterday.”

“She went for a walk, then.” It didn’t sound like Felicity, but it was possible. There had to be an explanation.

“She left her keys. I don’t even know how she could have locked the door behind her without her keys.”

“There’s a spare in the kitchen drawer.”

“It’s still there,” Thea said. “I think you need to get over here. Now.”

✥ ✥ ✥

Oliver stood outside the door to the loft with his gut twisting itself into knots. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He and Felicity were supposed to be married the next time he walked through this door.

He pushed it open with a shaking hand and stepped inside.

Everything looked exactly the same. It was just as he’d left it last night. No signs of a struggle or foul play. That had to be good, right?

Felicity’s work shoes were still sitting by the couch where she’d kicked them off when she got home yesterday. Like they were waiting for her to come downstairs and step into them. Oliver’s eyes went to the top of the stairs instinctively, half expecting Felicity to step into view, offering a simple explanation and an apology for scaring all of them.

“Ollie,” Thea said softly behind him.

She and Lyla were standing at the breakfast bar, watching him with taut expressions. Felicity’s purse sat between them, the contents spread out over the counter.

“Do you know the password to Felicity’s phone?” Lyla asked, coming towards him and holding it out.

Oliver took it from her. It unlocked to his thumbprint. He disabled the passcode and handed it back.

“We’ll find her,” Lyla said, giving his arm a reassuring squeeze.

“There’s two hundred … seventeen dollars cash here,” Thea said, flipping through Felicity’s wallet. “Credit cards, driver’s license, all here.”

“No unusual incoming or outgoing calls or texts since yesterday,” Lyla said, scrolling through Felicity’s phone. “Email all looks benign at first glance.”

Oliver walked over to the coffee maker. He’d set it last night to go off this morning, just like he always did. It’d already switched itself off but the carafe was still warm to the touch. And full to the brim. Which meant wherever she was, Felicity hadn’t had any coffee this morning.

It was that, as much as anything else, that really drove it home to him that something was desperately wrong. Felicity without her morning coffee was unthinkable. She wouldn’t have left voluntarily without it.

He ran upstairs to the bedroom, vaulting the steps two at a time.

The bed was unmade. The bag Felicity was supposed to be taking on their honeymoon was still sitting by the bathroom door, packed and ready to go except for a few last-minute items. Yesterday’s clothes lay strewn on the floor where he’d let them fall last night when he undressed her.

Oliver’s eyes burned at the memory. She’d wanted him to stay. If only he’d listened, if he hadn’t insisted on following some stupid tradition, he would have been here …

_Focus._ All that mattered right now was finding Felicity.

He blinked hard a couple of times and cast his eyes around the room—skirting quickly over the wedding dress that was hanging, concealed inside its garment bag, on the back of the closet door.

Felicity’s glasses were on the bedside table. Next to—

Her engagement ring. Oliver walked over to it, but he didn’t touch it.

It didn’t necessarily mean anything. She often took it off when she slept. Sometimes she’d put it in her jewelry box, but sometimes, if she was already in bed, she’d set it on the bedside table. And then she’d slip it back on first thing in the morning when she got up.

Oliver spun around. What else? There had to be something else different about the room. Some clue as to what had happened.

_There._ One of the dresser drawers was ajar—the drawer where Felicity kept her pajamas. He was almost positive it had been closed when he left. He walked over and jerked it open, but nothing looked out of the ordinary.

Oliver went over to Felicity’s honeymoon bag and rifled around until he found the pajamas she’d packed for the trip. Then he went back to the dresser drawer. There was a pair unaccounted for—the turquoise ones with the ice cream cones on them. He’d washed them two days ago and put them away in this very drawer. And now they weren’t here.

So after he left last night she’d gotten up and put on a pair of pajamas. And then what? Taken off her engagement ring and vanished into thin air?

He searched through the sheets and blankets on the bed. Got down on his hands and knees and peered under the furniture. Checked the windows even though he knew they were sealed tight. Nothing.

“Lyla already checked all the windows,” Diggle said, stepping into the room behind Oliver. “Balcony, too. No signs of ingress or egress anywhere in the apartment.”

Oliver nodded, but he didn’t turn around. “Her ring—”

“I saw it,” Diggle said quietly.

Oliver went into the closet and flipped on the light. It smelled like Felicity in here, like her perfume. He reached out and ran his hand down the sleeve of one of her jackets.

Everything looked exactly the same as it had when he’d packed his own bag to take to Thea’s yesterday. Nothing out of place, as far as he could tell, other than the clothes she’d packed for the honeymoon. The rest of their luggage was still stowed up on the top shelf. She hadn’t packed another bag, he was certain of that.

He almost wished she had. That there was evidence she’d left of her own free will—even if it meant she’d left _him_ of her own free will. Because the alternative was infinitely worse.

When Oliver emerged from the closet, Diggle’s eyes met his. “Anything missing?”

Oliver shook his head.

He’d still harbored a faint hope, when he rushed over here, that this was all some kind of stupid misunderstanding. That he’d be able to find a sign that everything was okay, that Felicity had just stepped out for a few minutes on some harmless errand. That she’d be back any minute and everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be.

But whatever had happened to Felicity wasn’t harmless.

“She wouldn’t leave,” he said helplessly. “Not on her own. Not today.”

“I know,” Diggle said.

“Something happened to her. Someone—someone must have taken her. We have to find her.”

“We will.”

“There are cameras in the lobby and the parking garage,” Oliver said, his mind racing. “And at the gas station across the street …”

“Lyla’s already got her people at ARGUS on it,” Diggle told him.

Oliver blew out a shaky breath. His heart felt like it was trying to pound its way out of his chest. Felicity was gone and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to _do._ He—

“Oliver.” Diggle’s hands landed solidly on his shoulders. “We need to call the police.”

Oliver closed his eyes and nodded.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The SCPD sent a uniformed officer over—Felicity’s disappearance didn’t even rate a detective, apparently. Officer Lopez made a cursory sweep of the loft and took statements from everyone, but it was clear what he thought had happened. Once he got a look at the engagement ring sitting on the nightstand that was that, as far as he was concerned. Case closed.

A woman goes missing on the eve of her wedding? It’s obviously a runaway bride situation. She’d simply gotten a case of cold feet and taken off rather than face up to her friends and family and husband-to-be.

“She’ll turn up in a day or two,” he told Oliver sympathetically. “They always do.”

He shrugged off the mystery of how Felicity had managed to lock the door behind her without a key. Or why she’d leave all her earthly possessions behind, without taking so much as a change of clothes, much less her car or her glasses or the cash in her wallet.

“Who knows what’s going through a woman’s head when she does something like this,” he said, as if women were strange, irrational creatures whose motivations were arbitrary and unknowable.

Oliver ground his teeth together and resisted the urge to punch the guy.

Officer Lopez finished filling out his report, cast one last pitying look Oliver’s way, and left.

If Felicity hadn’t been a prominent public figure and CEO who’d already been the victim of a high-profile attempt on her life, the SCPD probably wouldn’t even have bothered to do that much. Maybe if Lance had still been there they would have done more, but Lance wasn’t there anymore.

They were on their own.

Fortunately Oliver had Lyla, and Lyla had ARGUS.

Her forensic experts were on the scene five minutes after the SCPD officer left. One team swept every inch of the loft for trace evidence, while another spread out and canvassed the building and surrounding area. A third team pored over Felicity’s laptop and phone, sifting through all her electronic communications for signs of trouble.

Which left nothing for Oliver to do except quietly panic. He burned to be out looking for Felicity, to be doing _something_ , but he’d just be stumbling around in the dark at this point. He’d been racking his brain, but he didn’t even have a guess as to who might have taken her, or why. And until he had a decent lead to go on, there wasn’t anything productive he could do except wait for ARGUS to finish their work.

He paced restlessly around the loft for a while, watching Lyla’s people work, but he kept getting in their way. Eventually he sank down on the couch and buried his head in hands.

Nightmare scenarios competed for center stage in his imagination. Kidnapping for ransom. Kidnapping for retribution. She was being tortured for information. She was already dead, and he wouldn’t know it until her body was fished out of the harbor. Or worse: she’d been dumped in a landfill and he’d never know.

Felicity’s mother burst into the loft, dragging him out of his morbid reverie. Oliver got to his feet and took a stuttering step toward her, consumed with guilt.

“Oh, Oliver,” she said tearfully, and fell into his arms.

He hadn’t even thought to call her. He hadn’t thought about anything except Felicity.

“What happened?” Donna asked, letting go of Oliver. “What happened to my girl?”

“I don’t know,” he told her. “But we’re going to find out. I promise you, Donna, I’ll get her back.”

She nodded, wiping the tears from under her heavily mascaraed lashes. “I know you will.” She rummaged around in her purse until she came up with a wad of tissue. “It’s just so unfair. After everything she’s been through. Today was supposed to be her special day.”

 _The wedding._ It was supposed to be starting in a couple of hours. He’d completely forgotten about it.

“The wedding guests,” he said helplessly. “I need to—”

“It’s handled,” Thea said. She’d come in behind Donna. He hadn’t even noticed her leave, but apparently she’d been busy taking care of Oliver’s responsibilities while he sat here and fell apart.

And now she was coaxing Donna into the kitchen, offering her coffee. Comforting her and trying to keep her spirits up. Like Oliver should be doing.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t think about coffee or phone calls or caterers. Not when Felicity was … he didn’t even know what she was. If she was alive or dead. If she was in pain. Injured. Scared.

What was he even doing? Sitting around brooding while everyone else did all the work. When Felicity needed him. He couldn’t stay here anymore; he needed to be out there, looking for her.

Oliver started for the door.

“Where you going?” Diggle said, intercepting him.

“Felicity’s out there somewhere. That’s where I need to be.”

Diggle raised an eyebrow. “So, what, you’re just gonna wander aimlessly around the city looking for her?”

Oliver’s jaw clenched. “Maybe.”

“You’d just be looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do. At least I’d be looking.”

Diggle gave him a long, appraising look, and Oliver tensed, afraid he was going to try to insist on coming with him. “You got your phone?” Diggle said finally.

Oliver patted his pocket and nodded.

“You _answer it_ if I call. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Diggle stepped aside to let him pass. “We come up with a lead, I’ll let you know. I expect you to do the same.”

Oliver slammed out of the loft and took off at a run.

✥ ✥ ✥

He went straight to the lair. Diggle had already checked it this morning, on his way over to the loft, just make sure Felicity hadn’t been there.

Oliver knew she wasn’t there. He knew she _couldn’t_ be there—they’d been monitoring the security feeds remotely all morning. Even so, he couldn’t help the little spark of hope that flared in his chest as he walked through the door. Maybe she _would_ be there, in defiance of all reason. Sitting in her chair, waiting for him. Smiling at him when he walked in. Her disappearance had defied all reason, so why shouldn’t her reappearance?

She wasn’t there.

Oliver walked up onto the platform, over to her workstation. He ran his hand over the top of her chair. “Where are you?” he asked the empty space where Felicity should be.

He couldn’t bear to sit in her chair, so he checked the lair security logs standing up. He checked them even though he knew Diggle had already done it, just to make sure nothing had been missed. Nothing had.

Oliver went and put on the Green Arrow suit.

✥ ✥ ✥

Four hours later, he was back in the lair. He hadn’t turned up anything, not that he’d really expected to.

He was working his frustration out on the heavy bag when Diggle came and found him.

“You got something?” Oliver asked hopefully, dragging his arm across his forehead.

Diggle shook his head. “Not a damn thing.”

“How is that possible?”

With all the resources of ARGUS at their disposal you’d think they’d be able to turn up something. _Anything._ A single goddamn piece of evidence for them to go on.

“I don’t know,” Diggle said apologetically, like it was his fault. “Forensics came up with nothing. No prints, no blood, no unidentified hair or fibers. They’re still combing through all the CCTV footage, but so far nothing’s jumped out.”

“What about the canvass?” Oliver asked.

“Nobody saw anything.”

“ _How could she just vanish without leaving a single trace?_ ” Oliver hadn’t realized he was yelling until he saw Diggle flinch.

“I don’t know,” his friend said gently.

Oliver turned his back on him and started punching the heavy bag again. He didn’t stop until he couldn’t feel either of his arms anymore.

✥ ✥ ✥

Donna moved into the loft. To keep the home fires burning, she said, in case Felicity came home.

Oliver couldn’t stand to be there. Everything there reminded him of Felicity. Of what he’d lost.

He slept at Thea’s, when he managed to sleep at all. With sleep came the dreams. Felicity lost in a maze, calling out his name. Felicity’s head disappearing under dark, murky waters. Felicity lying in a grave, glassy-eyed and lifeless.

He didn’t even try to sleep some nights.

Lyla had ARGUS scouring ticket purchases and CCTV footage at every port of entry, rental car agency, airport, bus and train station in a two-hundred mile radius.

Curtis Holt was going through all of Felicity’s electronic communications with a fine-tooth comb, looking for anomalies. He also had dozens of search algorithms running, sifting the internet 24/7 for anything that might help them identify who might have taken Felicity, or why.

Meanwhile, Oliver and Diggle and Thea were hitting the streets day and night, talking to informants, tracking down potential suspects, searching abandoned warehouses and known sites of criminal activity. In the absence of any real leads to go on, they’d elected to start with old enemies, looking into anyone who might be nursing a grudge against Felicity, Oliver, or the Green Arrow. They were leaving no stone unturned, no suspect unquestioned, no potential trail unfollowed.

Even the SCPD and the FBI got in on the action and opened a real investigation after twenty-four hours had passed with no word from Felicity.

And all of it turned up nothing. Zero. Zilch. Big fat nada.

No ransom demand ever came. No criminal mastermind claimed credit for the Queen Inc. CEO’s kidnapping. No trace of her turned up.

There was no explanation for what had happened to Felicity. No clues to where she might be—or whether she was even still alive.

She was just … gone.

✥ ✥ ✥

After two weeks Felicity’s mother flew back to Las Vegas.

“I’m not giving up on her,” Donna said, hugging Oliver fiercely. “She’ll come back to us.”

He felt like he’d failed her.

Curtis went from updating Oliver daily to updating him weekly. Eventually he stopped doing even that.

Oliver didn’t blame him. What was the point of continuing to update him that he still hadn’t turned anything up?

At the end of a month, Thea told him she was giving up the search. “We’re just spinning our wheels out there,” she told Oliver. “Looking for clues that don’t exist, And meanwhile there are real, actual crimes being committed and no one’s doing anything to stop them. If you find something concrete to go on, I’m 100 percent here for you, but until then I’m getting back to work.”

Oliver couldn’t blame her, either. Someone had to keep the city safe while he continued searching for Felicity.

“You should go with her,” he told Diggle.

Diggle crossed his arms. “No way.”

“She’s right,” Oliver said. “And she needs you more than I do right now. Get back to work, John. I’ll let you know when’s there’s anything you can do.”

✥ ✥ ✥

The problem was that Oliver had run out of places to search. There were no more leads left to track down. No one left to question. Every potential suspect he’d been able to come up with had been investigated and eliminated. He was at a dead end.

He’d moved back into the loft by then, because it was all he had left of Felicity. It was the only way he could feel close to her anymore. Every day that passed, it felt like she was slipping further away from him. Like the chances of ever seeing her again were getting smaller.

Like he was going to live out the rest of his life without ever knowing what had happened to her.

Oliver spent the next few weeks aimlessly wandering the rooftops of the city at night, hoping without hope for some random glimpse of Felicity. Eventually he gave up doing even that.

He stopped going out altogether. Stopped answering his phone. Stopped eating.

He’d started drinking a while ago because it was the only way he could stand to close his eyes at night. But now that he didn’t have anything else to do it became a full-time hobby. His nights were devoted to anesthetizing himself with alcohol, and his days to sleeping off the night before.

Oliver gave up, not just on finding Felicity, but on everything.

✥ ✥ ✥

“Get up!” Diggle shouted as light flooded the loft.

Oliver groaned and tried to bury his head in the couch cushions. Apparently he hadn’t made it up to the bed last night.

“It’s two in the afternoon, Oliver, what are you doing?”

“Sleeping,” Oliver muttered into the couch. “Or trying to.”

“We haven’t seen you in days, man.”

Grudgingly, Oliver sat up and rubbed his head. It felt like it was full of nails. “Well, I’ve been right here.”

“Apparently.” Diggle made a face. “You forget where the shower was?”

Oliver shot him a baleful look. “What do you want, John?”

“When’s the last time you left the house? Or even changed your clothes?”

Oliver shrugged and looked around for the bottle he’d been drinking from last night. If he was going to have to listen to a lecture, he was going to need a drink to tamp down this beast of a headache.

“You’re not answering your phone,” Diggle said. “Thea’s worried about you.”

“Tell her not to bother.” There it was, buried at the foot of the couch. Oliver grabbed the bottle and turned it upside down. It was empty.

“She can’t help it, she’s your sister.”

Oliver pushed himself off the couch and shuffled into the kitchen. He started opening cabinets, trying to remember which one he’d put the whiskey in.

“I’m worried about you too,” Diggle said, watching him.

Finally! A brand new bottle of Johnny Walker. He seized it triumphantly and cracked the seal.

Diggle snatched it out of his hand. “Will you look at yourself right now?”

“Don’t,” Oliver said, low and dangerous, “do that.”

“Or what?” Diggle taunted. “You gonna hit me, Oliver? Cause you look like you want to hit me right now.”

Oliver shouldered past him. He _did_ want to hit him, and he needed to get away from him before he actually did it. “Get out of my house, John.”

Diggle followed him, refusing to let up. “What happened to you, man?”

“You know what happened to me,” Oliver growled. His hands were balled into fists.

“This isn’t you,” Diggle said. “This isn’t the Oliver Queen I know.”

Oliver refused to turn around. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you thought you did.”

“This isn’t the man Felicity knew, either. What do you think she’d say if she could see you like this, huh? You think she’d be proud of you right now?”

“She’s not here, is she?” Oliver shouted, rounding on him.

“No, she’s not,” Diggle said. “She’s gone. And you’ve gotta accept that. You’ve gotta let her go.”

“ _Don’t tell me to let go!”_ Oliver’s fist was swinging before he even realized he was doing it.

Diggle was ready for him, though. He sidestepped easily and grabbed Oliver’s arm, twisting and putting him into a rear wrist lock.

Oliver tried to fight his way out of it, but he was still half-drunk and his movements were slow and clumsy. Diggle slammed him against the wall, pinning him there with the weight of his body. “You don’t want to do this, man.”

But Oliver couldn’t have stopped even if he’d wanted to. He’d lost control of himself. Of his whole life. All he could feel anymore was rage and despair, and now that it had found a target it was all bubbling up out of him.

Diggle let him struggle for a while longer, and then he put him in a modified sleeper hold and hauled him upstairs to the bathroom. He shoved Oliver into the shower and turned the cold water on full force.

It hit Oliver like an electric shock. He crumpled to the hard tile floor and pulled his knees to his chest, shuddering.

“You have to let her go!” Diggle shouted at him. “It’s time to stop feeling sorry for yourself and pull yourself together. You gotta find a way to get past this before it kills you!”

“ _I can’t!”_ Oliver shouted back as the cold water streamed down his face. “Don’t you get it? I _can’t_ move past it! There’s nowhere to move on to! There’s nothing left for me. I’m nothing without her. _Nothing.”_ The last word came out as a choked sob.

Diggle’s expression softened. He reached into the shower and shut off the water. “You’re still Oliver Queen,” he said quietly. “You’re Thea’s big brother and my best friend. And we need you to keep going. _Felicity_ needs you to keep going, to keep her memory alive. She needs you to be _you,_ not this … whatever this is you’ve let yourself become.”

He yanked a towel off the rack and tossed it Oliver. “Get yourself cleaned up and meet me downstairs.”

When he was gone, Oliver pushed himself to his feet, stripped out of his wet clothes, and got back in the shower. He turned the water on as hot as he could stand and started to cry.

He cried in a way that he hadn’t let himself cry since he’d lost Felicity. Painful, heaving sobs that racked his whole body. He cried for the wedding they never got to have. For the years of happiness he’d thought lay ahead of them. For the family they would never start. He cried until he didn’t have anymore tears left, until it felt like his lungs were going to burst.

And then he turned off the water, dried himself off, and got dressed in clean clothes.

Vomiting up all the emotions he’d been trying to repress had left him feeling lighter. Freer. Like a little of the weight had been lifted from his chest. Not all of it, but enough that he could breathe again.

Now that he’d admitted he was lost maybe he could see about finding his way back.

When Oliver went downstairs Diggle was sitting on the couch waiting for him. He looked up and cocked an eyebrow. “Better?”

Oliver nodded. “Getting there.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

Thea spotted the men before Oliver did. “There,” she said, pointing them out on one of the dimly lit Glades streets below.

Three men, trailing a half-block behind a woman walking alone. Spread out in a fan formation, like hyenas stalking their prey. The woman must have known they were following her because her steps were hurried and she kept throwing glances back over her shoulder. Their long legs easily kept pace with hers, biding their time. Waiting for the right moment to strike.

“Race ya,” Thea said, grinning at Oliver. She swan-dived off the rooftop, firing a grappling arrow on the way down.

Show off.

Oliver rolled his eyes and followed suit, not even bothering to hurry. He was happy to let Thea have first crack at these guys if she wanted it. It wasn’t like she couldn’t handle them on her own, and there was no point in both of them getting their knuckles bloody.

By the time he got there she already had one man on the ground and was well on the way to taking down the other two. The woman the men had been stalking was long gone, having wisely taken the opportunity to run.

Oliver set to work tying up the man on the ground, but he kept one eye on the fight in case Thea needed a hand.

She didn’t. It was over before he’d even finished his last constrictor knot.

“These losers barely put up a decent fight,” Thea complained while she and Oliver finished tying all three men to a nearby light pole. “We need a better class of thug around here.”

“We really don’t,” Oliver said.

“The small-time stuff is just so boring,” Thea said, making a face at the three unconscious thugs.

“It’s not small time to the woman you just saved,” Oliver pointed out. “And we’re not out here for our entertainment.” At least he wasn’t. He couldn’t speak for Thea these days.

He’d always preferred the small-time stuff, anyway. It was concrete. Cut-and-dried. That woman tonight, her life was substantially better because she hadn’t been assaulted on this street just now. They’d made a real, measurable difference in the world, even if it was incremental.

Some days, that was the only thing that kept Oliver going.

“Spartan?” he said into the comm. “We’ve got three gifts tied up in a bow. Northwest corner of Liberty and Wayside.”

“Copy that. Notifying our friends in blue.”

Diggle usually stayed back at the lair these days, managing the comms and monitoring emergency services transmissions. It had taken Oliver a while to get used to hearing his voice directing him around the city instead of Felicity’s.

He’d had to get used to a lot of things the last few months.

Four months, two weeks, and one day, to be precise. That’s how long it had been since Felicity disappeared. How long it had been since Oliver had heard her laugh or held her in his arms or fallen asleep with her hair tickling his nose. Four months, two weeks, and one day of hell.

He was back on the streets, though, back in the Green Arrow suit. Working with the team again, fighting to make Star City safer.

Most days it felt like he was just going through motions of living, but at least he was getting up and doing something. It was a reason to get out of bed in the morning. That wasn’t something Oliver took for granted anymore.

“Tell me you’ve got something else for us,” Thea said into the comm. “Gimme some love, something good this time.”

Diggle huffed an amused breath. “Is the crime not up to your standards, tonight, Speedy?”

“You know, it’s _really_ not.”

“Well, you’re in luck, because I got a report just coming in of a break-in at … huh.”

“What is it?” Oliver asked.

“It’s a Queen Inc. facility. Out on the east side, Parker Road.”

Thea was looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised. Oliver gave her a nod.

“Race ya,” she said gleefully, and sprinted for the bikes they’d parked a couple blocks away.

The Parker Road facility was one of QI’s manufacturing sites. They made circuit boards or microchips or some kind of computer component. Oliver couldn’t remember exactly what. This was why he’d been a terrible CEO.

Felicity would have been able to describe every single product manufactured at the site off the top of her head, in loving detail. Which was one of many reasons why she’d been an outstanding CEO.

These days Queen Inc. was being run by an interim CEO brought in from outside by the board. By all accounts he was doing a good job. There were even rumors that they might make his appointment permanent soon. Oliver was glad the company was doing well, but he preferred to keep his involvement minimal. Too many memories.

It took them ten minutes to get to the facility on the east side of town. By the time he and Thea arrived the police were already on the scene.

“Looks like the perps are already long gone,” Diggle said. “Radio car’s reporting that the break-in happened an hour ago, during a power outage.”

“Was anybody hurt?” Oliver asked. He and Thea were hanging back out of sight, watching the responding officers mill around outside the building.

“Negative. There’s nothing for you to do there. Might as well pack it in for the night.”

“Well, that was a wasted trip,” Thea huffed.

She was still complaining about it when they walked into the lair twenty minutes later. Oliver resisted the urge chastise her. He could remember when he’d had her enthusiasm for the job. When he’d chased the adrenaline rush and actually looked forward to hitting the streets at night.

Good for her if she was still having fun. At least someone was.

“Good work out there tonight,” Diggle said, meeting them at the door. He cast a critical eye at Thea as she put her bow and quiver away. “What’s with that right arm?”

“It’s fine, just a little bruised.” She grinned. “Bumped it on a bad guy’s skull.”

Diggle tossed her an ice pack from the med kit.

“Who’s up for some late-night grub?” Thea asked, cradling the ice pack against her elbow. “I could murder a milkshake.”

“Wouldn’t say no to a cheeseburger,” Diggle said.

They both looked at Oliver expectantly.

“I’m just going to head home,” he said, turning away so he didn’t have to see their disappointed expressions, or the concerned look they were undoubtedly exchanging behind his back right now.

They didn’t try to talk him into it, though. He was doing the best he could, and they knew it.

“Maybe next time?” Thea asked hopefully.

“Sure,” Oliver said, and went to change out of his gear.

✥ ✥ ✥

He managed to sleep for four whole hours before the nightmares had him jerking awake in a cold sweat. This particular one was Felicity strapped to a table, crying out in pain while faceless men in hospital scrubs shoved needles under her fingernails. Always a favorite.

He hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since the day Diggle had dragged him into the shower, but the nightmares were the price he paid for his sobriety. Like everything else, he was learning to live with it.

It was a little after nine in the morning. Oliver threw some cold water on his face, pulled on his workout clothes, and headed to the lair. Maybe if he tired himself out enough he’d be able to catch another couple of hours’ sleep in the afternoon before they went out on patrol tonight. He didn’t like to be operating at a sleep deficit when he was out on the streets with Thea.

Diggle was already in the lair, bent over the computer, when Oliver got there. He was so deep in concentration he barely managed a half-hearted greeting as Oliver walked in.

Whatever he was working on clearly had him preoccupied, so Oliver left him to it and headed into the back to do some damage to the Wing Chun dummy.

An hour or so later Diggle wandered into the garage where Oliver was working out and leaned against one of the pillars, watching.

Oliver finished up his last set of pull-ups and dropped to the floor.

“Trouble sleeping?” Diggle asked.

“No more than usual.” Oliver grabbed a towel and wiped his face. “Wouldn’t mind a live sparring partner if you’re up for it.”

Diggle grinned. “Yeah, okay.”

They went a few rounds on the mats. Oliver was already tired, so Diggle managed to get the upper hand on him more than usual. Sitting on his ass running comms the last few months certainly hadn’t slowed him down any.

Oliver didn’t mind. He enjoyed sparring with Dig. It was one of the few times his mind felt clear and unburdened. He could lose himself focusing on the familiar, comforting rhythm of the movements. For a little while the world narrowed down to just to the two of them, and the trust and tacit communication they’d built between them over the years. It was liberating.

“Uncle,” Diggle said after Oliver managed to put him on the floor for the third time. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

“You and me, both.” Oliver bent over and rested his hands on his knees, panting. He actually felt almost good for a change. Exhausted, but good.

Diggle walked over to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of water. He tossed one of them Oliver.

“You ready to tell me what had you so distracted when I came in?” Oliver asked, twisting the cap off his bottle.

Diggle tipped back his water bottle and then wiped a hand across his mouth. “I’ve been looking into that break-in at the QI facility last night.”

“And?”

“And I think I’ve connected it to a series of similar thefts the last few weeks.”

Oliver walked over to the workbench and sank down on a stool. “I didn’t know there’d been any similar thefts the last few weeks.”

Diggle nodded absently. “Yeah, me neither. That’s ’cause they weren’t reported.”

“Why wouldn’t the thefts be reported?”

Diggle’s eyebrows lifted, waiting for Oliver to figure it out on his own.

It took him a second, but he did: “Because they stole trade secrets, and the companies covered it up to protect their stock prices.”

“Bingo,” Diggle said. “You bank your company’s future on your next big piece of piece of proprietary tech, and someone comes into your house and steals it out from under you, you don’t want the world to know about it—and you _especially_ don’t want your shareholders to know about it.”

“So how’d you figure it out?” Oliver asked, impressed.

“The thieves last night, they triggered a power outage to cover their ingress. Not on site—because that would be too obvious—but at the electrical substation itself. Some kind of malware attack, according to the guy I talked to at the power company. It caused a _destructive event_ —” He emphasized the phrase with sarcastic air quotes. “—that shut off power to a specific section of the grid—which just so happened to include the Queen facility that was hit.”

Oliver rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought security systems had built-in fail-secures for power outages.”

“They do, but they’re powered by backup batteries. And it just so happens that the back-up batteries at the facility last night were all mysteriously dead. Remotely drained, they think, via—”

“Cyber attack?” Oliver guessed.

“Uh huh.”

“What’d they steal?”

“Bunch of next generation microchips that were being tested for use in high-end supercomputers. Apparently they use something called carbon nanotubes instead of silicon?” Diggle shrugged helplessly.

It was all Greek to Oliver, too. Felicity undoubtedly would have understood it, and she would have earnestly tried to explain it to them, oblivious to the blank looks on their faces.

“Anyway,” Diggle went on, “I remembered hearing something about another localized power outage last week, so I started digging. Turns out, last night was the _third_ time an electrical substation has been hit by one of these attacks in the last month.”

“Lemme guess,” Oliver said, shaking his head. “The utility’s just been covering it up?”

Diggle leaned against the fridge and crossed his arms, smirking. “Shocking, right? And the location of each outage can be linked to a tech company: a local Wayne Tech facility, and another site owned by Kord Industries.”

Oliver frowned. “Any idea what they stole?”

“I tried talking to some of my security contacts,” Diggle said, shaking his head, “but they’re being pretty tight-lipped about all of it. Best I could do was narrow it down to a list of potential high-value targets at each site—all of it proprietary tech.”

“Stuff like that’s not easy to sell,” Oliver pointed out. “They might be planning to use it themselves.”

Diggle nodded. “I’ve been racking my brain all morning, trying to figure out what they’re doing with it, but it’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from a bunch of different boxes. I don’t know, man, all this high-tech stuff …” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m at sea here. And you know Felicity would’ve had it all figured out in five minutes.” His expression turned pained suddenly and he looked away.

Oliver swallowed a pang of guilt. He was so mired in his own grief most of the time, it was easy to forget that Diggle had lost her, too.

“Hey,” he said gently. “You did good. Felicity would be be proud.”

Diggle grimaced. “Yeah, well, I’m officially stuck. You got any bright ideas I’d love to hear ’em.”

“I do, actually,” Oliver said, standing up and slinging his gym bag over his shoulder.

Diggle’s eyebrows shot up. “You wanna share with the class?”

Oliver shrugged. “I’m gonna go borrow a tech expert.”

✥ ✥ ✥

Curtis Holt was a pretty big deal these days, now that he was Vice President of Advanced Research & Development at QI. Oliver hadn’t talked to him for a couple of months, but he knew if he called, Curtis would make time for him.

“Of course!” Curtis said when Oliver asked if they could meet, somewhere outside the office. “I can move some things around and fit you in this afternoon.”

Curtis arrived at Oliver’s old campaign office at precisely the time appointed. The building upstairs was closed up and vacant now, so Oliver met him at the front door to let him in. It had been months since Curtis had been there, and he cast a wistful look around the dusty office space as he stepped inside.

“Thanks for coming,” Oliver said, offering his hand.

“Is there news?” Curtis asked anxiously.

“News?” Oliver repeated.

“When you called I hoped—I thought maybe you had some news about Felicity.”

“No, sorry.” Oliver grimaced and shook his head. “It’s not—this is about something else altogether.”

“Oh,” Curtis said, trying not to look too disappointed. “Sure.”

Oliver tilted his head. “Come on,” he said, leading Curtis toward the back of the offices where the elevator to the lair was. “I’ll explain when we get downstairs.”

“So you’re still doing the whole superhero thing?” Curtis asked amiably on the ride down. “I wasn’t sure.”

Oliver pressed his lips together and nodded. “Still doing it.”

When the elevator doors opened, Curtis followed Oliver into the lair and then came to a halting stop, his eyes locked on Felicity’s chair up on the platform in the middle of the room.

Oliver knew exactly how he felt. It still hit him like a physical pain every time he walked into the lair and saw that empty chair sitting there.

Diggle and Thea wandered in from the back, still holding onto the staves they’d been sparring with. “Hey, how’s it going?” Diggle said with a nod.

Curtis lifted his hand and gave them a cautious wave. “Hey.” He turned to look at Oliver and his eyes narrowed. “Is this some kind of gang initiation?”

“Something like that,” Oliver said, smiling faintly. “We need your help, Curtis.”

✥ ✥ ✥

After Oliver had explained what they needed, Curtis called his assistant and canceled the rest of his afternoon. And then he sat down at Felicity’s computer and started poring over everything Diggle had discovered about their tech thieves.

“You sure about this?” Thea asked quietly, following Oliver over to the sharpening wheel.

“I’m sure,” Oliver told her, lowering himself onto the stool. “We can trust him. And he’s good.”

“He is kind of freakishly single-minded,” Diggle said.

Oliver glanced over at Curtis, his gut twisting a little. “Just like Felicity.”

“Yeah, sure,” Diggle said wryly. “If Felicity was a brother and, like, seven feet tall.”

“It just feels weird,” Thea said. “Having someone new in here. Sitting in Felicity’s chair.”

Even though it had been months, they all still avoided sitting at Felicity’s workstation. Like she was going to come back any minute and fuss at them for leaving drinks at her desk or fingerprints on her monitors.

“I think Felicity would be okay with it,” Oliver said quietly. If anyone was worthy of her chair, surely it was Curtis.

The three of them had been muddling through pretty well on their own the last few months, but it was time to admit they needed more help. It was time for all of them to accept that Felicity wasn’t coming back.

Oliver knew it was what she’d want—for him to move on with his life—but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

He fired up the motor on the sharpening wheel, forestalling any further conversation on the subject, and Thea and Diggle wandered off to finish their sparring.

“Eureka!” Curtis announced an hour later. “I think I’ve got it!”

Oliver set down the flechette he’d been sharpening and walked over to the PA system panel to call the others back in.

“Okay, this is actually fairly cool,” Curtis said excitedly when they were all gathered around. “Based on the microchips they stole from QI, and some of the potential proprietary tech targets Mr. Diggle collected, I’m pretty sure they’re trying build an exascale supercomputer.”

“What’s that?” Oliver asked, frowning.

“It’s an enormous, warehouse-sized computer that can carry out like a billion billion calculations per second. Which is only possible in theory at the moment, but it’s supposed to be the next generation of supercomputing.”

Oliver raised his eyebrows. “What could you do with something like that?”

“What couldn’t you do?” Curtis said. “A computer like that would have the same processing power as the human brain at the neural level. You could accurately simulate a nuclear fusion reactor, or living cells, or even create a model of the entire earth down to a one kilometer scale.”

“Okay, so probably not something you want in the hands of bad guys,” Thea observed.

“How close are they to building this thing?” Diggle asked.

Curtis shrugged. “It’s a massive undertaking and gathering the components is just the first step. Then you’ve actually got to put the thing together and write the code to make it run. We’re talking months of work, at least.”

“So that’s good,” Oliver said. “Assuming they haven’t finished collecting the components yet, any guess what their next target might be?”

Curtis frowned and adjusted his glasses. “I mean, I could make some guesses, but they’d be just that—guesses. There are too many variables to accurately predict their next step.”

“It’s a good bet they’ll stick to the same MO, since it’s worked out well for them so far,” Diggle pointed out.

Oliver nodded. “So we wait for another power outage and try to catch them in the act?”

“Which is why I’ve tapped into the power company’s outage tracker,” Curtis said, leaning back in his chair and grinning. “The second an outage occurs that matches our search parameters you’ll all get an alert.”

Diggle pushed himself to his feet. “In that case I’m going home to make dinner for my wife.”

“Good work,” Oliver told Curtis. “Thanks for taking the time to help us out.”

“Happy to do it,” Curtis chirped. “Seriously, anytime. It’s kind of fun getting to play hero.”

Oliver didn’t have the heart to contradict him.

✥ ✥ ✥

Five days later, the first cold front of the season dropped the temperature twenty degrees, and the power went out in four square blocks of Pennytown.

Curtis’ warning system alerted them as soon as the power grid went down, and Oliver and Thea were on their bikes racing to the scene.

“There’s an Amertek storage facility on one of those blocks,” Diggle told them over comms. “Looks like the likeliest target. Pulling up the blueprints now.”

Oliver followed Thea around a panel van and through a red light, missing Felicity’s magic touch with the Star City traffic system as horns blared in their wake.

“ETA two minutes,” he updated Diggle as they were approaching Pennytown.

“You’re looking for a building in the 4800 block of Kershaw,” Diggle said. There was a pause and then: “What—how’d you get in here?”

“Who’s there?” Oliver asked.

“Geek Squad just let himself in like he lives here now,” Diggle said sourly.

“Hey, everybody!” Curtis said cheerfully over the comms.

“Hey,” Oliver said, shaking his head in amusement as he pulled off into a narrow alley. He parked his bike next to Thea’s and hopped off. “We’re here. Approaching the building from the south.”

“There’s a door on the west side, back by the loading dock, looks like your best bet for entry,” Diggle told them.

Oliver nodded at Thea and they started making their way around the building. “Door’s been jimmied,” he noted when they reached the loading dock. He pushed it open and they stepped into the building. The corridors were illuminated by the anemic glow of the emergency fire lights that had kicked on when the power went out.

“According to these blueprints, the most secure room in the building is up on the fourth floor,” Diggle said. “Northwest corner.”

“Um, hey, Oliver,” Curtis broke in as they entered the stairwell.

“We try not to use names on comms,” Oliver said, wincing.

“Right, sorry, my bad. I just thought you’d want to know there’s another set of comm signals in your vicinity. I think it might belong to your bad guys.”

“Can you hack into it?” Oliver asked as he and Thea ascended the stairs.

“Sure thing!” Curtis replied cheerfully. There was a pause, and then: “Oh, hell! No, you don’t!”

Oliver and Thea exchanged a worried look.

“What’s happening?” Oliver asked.

“Their hacker detected me,” Curtis muttered. “He just tried to launch a multi-variant worm at your firewall.”

Oliver had no idea what that meant, but it sounded bad. “Can you handle it?” he asked tensely. He and Thea had just emerged from the stairwell and were making their way down the corridor.

“Well, _yeah,_ I can handle it,” Curtis responded, sounding offended that Oliver would even ask. “But … I’m not gonna be able to intercept their comms.”

“Great,” Thea said.

“But I did manage to jam them,” Curtis said proudly.

“Good work,” Oliver murmured into the comm. There was an open door up ahead, and the glow of a flashlight beam moving around inside.

He motioned to Thea and they paused just outside the door. There were two voices coming from inside, both of them male. Complaining about their dead comms. _Way to go, Curtis._

Oliver gave the signal and he and Thea plunged into the room, surprising two men dressed in black and wearing balaclavas. Whoever they were, they weren’t experienced fighters; their skills were only street-level, at best. Much to Thea’s disappointment, undoubtedly.

“I was able to pinpoint the origin of the other comm signal,” Curtis said as Oliver ducked easily under a telegraphed haymaker. “It’s coming from a location 400 feet east of you.”

Oliver straightened and kicked his adversary in the solar plexus, sending him flying into the wall. “That’s right outside the building.”

“I think their hacker’s on site,” Curtis said. “Maybe parked on the street.”

Oliver looked over at Thea, who’d just finished sweeping the legs out from under her opponent. “Go,” she said. “I got these guys.”

Oliver took off running, down the stairs and out the door. When he got to the street he stopped and looked around. The likeliest bet was a nondescript white contractor’s van parked halfway down the block.

He edged his way over to it, ducking between empty cars. There was no one visible in the front seats, so he crept around to the back and gently tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

He nocked an arrow and threw the door open. There was a woman inside, hunched over a laptop. She jumped up, startled, when he leapt into the back of the van. Her hair was dark brown and chopped off in a chin-length bob, but she looked a lot like …

No.

But it was. Her hair was different and she was wearing different glasses—the frames were larger, rounder, and solid black—but it was her.

“Felicity?” Oliver said, lowering his bow.

“ _What?”_ said three voices in his ear, in unison.

Felicity’s brow crinkled, the way it always did when she was surprised or confused, and it was so achingly familiar and so utterly _her,_ Oliver wanted to cry.

But then her face went hard, in a way that wasn’t familiar at all, and the corner of her mouth twisted into a scowl. “You got the wrong girl, bro. And the wrong car.”

She raised her hand. There was a Smith & Wesson 9mm semiautomatic in it. Pointed at him.

“Felicity …”

“That’s not my name.”

Oliver took a step toward her. “Please, just—”

“I wouldn’t,” she warned, raising the gun higher.

“You’re not gonna shoot me,” Oliver said.

Felicity barked out a harsh laugh. “Boy, are you wrong.”

She pulled the trigger.

There was a flash and a deafening bang, and then he was falling backwards. The last thing he heard before he blacked out was Thea was yelling at him over the comms.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

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>   
> 

Oliver came awake in the lair, shouting Felicity’s name.

“Take it easy,” Diggle growled, laying an arm across his chest to restrain him. “You’ll pop all those stitches I just finished putting in”

Chest heaving, Oliver sank back on the exam table. His left shoulder felt like it’d been injected with lava.

Where Felicity shot him.

Felicity.

 _Shot_ him.

Oliver closed his eyes and considered passing out again as a wave of nausea washed over him.

“You sure we shouldn’t take him to a hospital?” he heard Thea ask.

“Flesh wound,” Diggle told her gruffly. “He’ll be fine.”

“Ollie?” Thea’s hand closed over his.

He forced his eyes open. And then he forced himself to sit up. Carefully.

“I’m okay,” he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the table—even though he was far from okay. Okay might as well be be in another solar system, that’s how far away from okay he was.

“Was it really Felicity?” Diggle asked.

Oliver nodded.

“You sure? Because—”

“She _shot_ you,” Thea finished for him.

“It was her,” Oliver said, swallowing the bile in the back of his throat. “But she wasn’t herself. She didn’t … she didn’t seem to recognize me. Or her own name.”

Thea scratched her head. There was a smudge of blood on her cheek, mingling with the eyeblack. “You mean like she had amnesia or something?”

“Or something,” Oliver said.

“It was definitely Felicity,” Curtis piped up from across the room. He was over at the computer, staring at the screen and shaking his head. “I should have seen it sooner.”

“Seen what?” Oliver stood up and wavered a little; Diggle’s hand shot out to steady him. Oliver leaned against the exam table, bracing his hands on the edge, and Diggle let go.

“This code,” Curtis said, pointing at the screen. “The malware that caused the power outages, it’s got her fingerprints all over it—her virtual fingerprints, that is. I’d recognize her style anywhere.” He spun his chair around and looked at Oliver, agonized. “I didn’t dig deep enough into the power company’s system to see it before. If I had, I would have known it was her—I could have warned you. I’m sorry.”

Oliver shook his head. “It’s not your fault. It’s only because of you that we found her at all.”

“Yeah, but now we’ve lost her again,” Thea pointed out. “Also, she _shot you.”_

“Yeah, what the hell was that about?” Diggle said. “And why is she running around with a band of tech thieves? Where’s she been all this time? What happened to her?”

“I don’t know!” Oliver snapped, rubbing his temples to try and stop his head from spinning. It was all too much. He couldn’t think and he didn’t have answers to any of Diggle’s questions, or any of the hundred other questions that were racing through his own mind at the moment.

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Sorry,” he muttered into the sudden silence that had fallen. “I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s all right,” Diggle said, dropping a hand on his uninjured shoulder. “We’re all in shock right now. It’s a lot to take in.”

Oliver looked up into his friend’s eyes. He could see tension there, and concern, but also strength. And a steely determination. When he looked at his sister he saw the same thing.

Whatever was happening, they’d figure it out. They’d get Felicity back.

_He was going to get Felicity back._

Oliver felt a tightness in his chest that didn’t have anything to do with the bullet Diggle had pulled out of him. It was something he hadn’t felt in so long it took him a second to identify it: hope.

He took a deep breath. “Whatever’s going on, she’s not doing this of her own free will. We’re all agreed on that, right?” He looked at the others, and was rewarded with three solemn nods. “So either she genuinely doesn’t remember who she is … or she’s being coerced.”

“You mean like when Roy had that tech in his eye last year?” Thea suggested.

“Her eyes were clear,” Oliver said, swallowing as he remembered the way she’d looked at him—looked _through_ him, more like. Cold and detached, like she didn’t feel anything at all. “But yeah, it could be something like that.”

“Like when you ran off and got yourself brainwashed by the League of Assassins?” Diggle said wryly. “Could it be something like that, maybe?”

Oliver shot him a look. “I wasn’t brainwashed, I was just pretending, so that—you know what, it doesn’t matter. First we need to find her again, _then_ we can figure out how we’re going to get her back.”

“I think I might be able to help with that,” Curtis said. “Now that I know what I’m looking for, I can start checking into recent cyber crimes to see if I can pick up her trail. I might be able track one of them back to her.” His brow furrowed, and he ran a hand over the back of his neck. “It’s, uh … it’s gonna take some time, though.”

“How much time?” Oliver asked.

“I don’t know, it’s a lot to sift through. Days, maybe.” He looked regretful.

“Fine,” Oliver said, trying not to sound disappointed. “Good. Do it. Whatever you can. As long as it takes.”

Curtis nodded and turned back the computer, fiercely resolute.

“What happened to the two men she was working with?” Oliver asked Thea.

“Left ’em for the cops,” she said with a tilt of her head. “Who arrived about two minutes after I managed to drag your unconscious—and very heavy, might I add—ass out of the street.”

“The responding officers took two men into custody at the scene,” Diggle confirmed, crossing his arms.

“What about the van Felicity was in?” Oliver said.

Thea shook her head. “Long gone by the time I got to you. We might be able to get the plates off a traffic camera, though?”

“It was a white Chevy commercial van,” Oliver said. “No markings.”

Diggle nodded. “I’ll look into it. And I’ll talk to my contact at SCPD in the morning and find out what they’ve got on Felicity’s accomplices.”

“I’ll go back to the scene and poke around,” Thea said. “See if maybe there’s something the cops missed.”

“And you,” Diggle said, cocking a stern eyebrow at Oliver, “are going home.”

“No, I’m not,” Oliver said.

“Yes, you are,” Diggle countered, brooking no argument. “There’s nothing you can do right now except distract Curtis with your glowering. And you and that shoulder both need rest. You’re gonna want to be on your A-game when we find Felicity again, right?”

Grudgingly, Oliver went home. He lay down in the bed he used to share with Felicity and tossed and turned, waiting for the painkiller he’d taken to make a dent in his throbbing shoulder.

When he finally slept, he dreamed of Felicity. She was sitting in a rowboat with her back to him, in the middle of a large lake. The harder he tried swim to her, the farther away from him she drifted.

Oliver woke up sputtering and flailing, with his shoulder on fire. So much for sleeping.

He got up and brewed a pot of coffee. Even though his stomach rebelled at the thought of food, he forced himself to eat some toast and a protein shake.

Diggle called with an update a little after nine. “Traffic camera picked up the van speeding down Parker, but there’s nothing after the railroad tracks. I tracked the plates—looks like it was stolen from a commercial leasing company on the south side of town. They hadn’t even noticed it was missing yet.”

“Any chance there’s security footage of the theft?” Oliver asked hopefully.

Diggle grunted. “Funny thing: their office got hit with a power surge the other day. Fried the whole security system and all their computers. The place is pretty much chaos right now.”

“Felicity,” Oliver said, rubbing his forehead.

“Yep,” Diggle agreed. “As for our two friends in SCPD custody, they’re a couple of career criminals specializing in burglary, with a few odd robberies and aggravated assaults thrown in over the years. They say they were hired to do the jobs, but they don’t know who by.”

“How were they hired?”

“Craig’s List, if you can believe it. All communication was done via email, and the money was wired directly into their accounts after each job.”

Oliver scrubbed a hand over his face. “And I’m guessing it’s all going to turn out to be untraceable.”

“Probably.”

“You think they’re telling the truth?”

Diggle made a noncommittal noise. “Supposedly they were both pretty eager to make a deal. Gave up their female accomplice up right away, but they didn’t know anything about her other than a physical description. The only name she gave them was a codename: Proxy.”

“Did Thea come up with anything at the scene?”

“Nothing.”

Oliver sighed. “So we’re nowhere.”

“My source is emailing me video of the interrogations,” Diggle said. “I’ll forward it to you when I get it.”

Oliver spent the next hour pacing his apartment and obsessively refreshing his email every few minutes.

When it finally came he sat and watched both interrogations from beginning to end. Then he went back and watched them again. Diggle’s SCPD source was right: both men appeared to be telling the truth, and neither of them knew much.

Dead ends all around.

Which meant that Curtis was pretty much their only hope. He’d called in sick at QI for the day so he could keep searching for a lead on Felicity, but so far he hadn’t come up with anything.

It might take days, he’d said.

Oliver didn’t know what to do with himself. He did the dishes, went through his mail, and straightened up the loft. When he’d run out of other things to do he sat down in front of the TV and tried to watch a basketball game he’d recorded the other night.

He’d just started to doze off when Curtis called. “I found something weird, but I’m not sure what it means.”

“What is it?” Oliver asked, reaching for the remote and muting the television.

“Okay, so I’ve been checking into recent cyber crimes, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, it turns out, a variant of the same malware that infected the power company computers—but, like, an earlier version of it—was used to launch a series of attacks against several major media conglomerates over the last few months.”

“Media conglomerates?” Oliver repeated.

“Yeah, the parent companies of the _Star City Sentinel_ and all the local television affiliates were among those hit. In this case, the attacks resulted in the permanent loss of certain files—specifically, files relating to Felicity. Video, images, text, anything that’s ever appeared about her in the newspaper or on television, it’s all gone.”

“That’s ...” Oliver didn’t even know what that was. “Crazy. You can’t just erase the news, can you?”

“Someone did. Or they’re trying to, anyway. I mean, you can’t comprehensively eliminate every reference on the internet—it’s way too big. But someone’s sure making the effort.”

“You think Felicity did it?” Oliver asked.

“I don’t know,” Curtis said. “Like I said, it’s an earlier variant of the code. It’s not written in her style, but she could have lifted it from someone else.”

“Okay,” Oliver said, rubbing his eyes. “Anything else?”

“That’s it so far, but I’ll keep looking.”

“Thanks, Curtis.”

After he’d hung up, Oliver went to the computer and typed “Felicity Smoak” and “Star City” into the search bar.

_No results found for **“Felicity Smoak” “Star City”.**_

Curtis was right. The news articles about her appointment as CEO, their engagement, everything on her shooting last year, and about her disappearance this year, it was all gone. As far as Google was concerned, none of it had ever happened.

Oliver called Diggle and filled him in on what Curtis had found. Then he took another painkiller and tried to take a nap.

Four fitful hours later he got up, showered, and headed in to the lair.

Curtis was the only one there. He didn’t appear to have moved from his spot in front of the computer since last night. Oliver took one look at his bloodshot eyes and the dozen or so empty energy drink cans collected around him, and sent him home.

“Get some sleep,” Oliver told him. “Come back fresh tomorrow.”

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Another day of waiting to get through.

Oliver wandered into the garage. He was crawling out of his skin. And with his shoulder injured, he couldn’t even work off steam by exercising.

When Diggle came in a little while later, Oliver had his bike’s transmission disassembled and lying in pieces all over the floor around him.

Diggle raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Well, I guess it’s better than tearing your shoulder open on the salmon ladder.”

“Don’t think I didn’t consider it,” Oliver said. “But I figured I’d save you the trouble of yelling at me.”

“Appreciate it,” Diggle said. “What happened to Curtis?”

“Sent him home. He was starting to get that crazy-eyed look like a Looney Tunes character.”

“Probably for the best,” Diggle agreed. He crouched down and picked up the cylinder head Oliver had just finished cleaning. “How are you doing?”

Oliver’s jaw set. “Hanging in there.” Barely.

Diggle nodded. “How about I help you put this bike back together and then we’ll change the dressing on that shoulder?”

An hour later, Thea showed up with Thai food. The three of them sat around the conference table eating summer rolls and drunken noodles and _not_ talking about the fact that Felicity was alive and apparently some kind of cybercriminal.

“I’m gonna go suit up,” Thea said, almost sheepishly, when they were done. “I thought maybe I’d hit the streets tonight, just, you know—” She shrugged vaguely. “—see if I could dig anything up.”

“I’ll go with you,” Diggle said, pushing back his chair. “Oliver can stay in and play DJ for a change.”

So Oliver had the honor of manning the comms while Speedy and Spartan checked in with a few informants to see if anyone knew anything about their gang of tech thieves. No one did. But hey, they did manage to foil a carjacking while they were out and about, so the night wasn’t completely wasted.

At two-thirty they all packed it in and went home. Oliver took another painkiller and fell into a restless sleep.

Curtis was back in the lair bright and early the next morning. Oliver woke to a text from him at seven o’clock saying that he’d left a few scripts running and was going into work for a few hours but he’d be back to check on them at lunch.

Great. More waiting.

Oliver rolled over and went back to sleep.

At noon he got up and went for a run, and then he came back and made himself a Dagwood-sized sandwich. The rest of the afternoon he wiled away scrubbing the grout in the bathroom.

Because he needed to be doing something. Because Felicity was alive. She was _out there,_ and there was nothing he could do about it yet. If he didn’t keep busy he’d go crazy.

At five-thirty Curtis texted again:

_Found her._

Oliver practically broke the sound barrier getting back to the lair. When he got there, Diggle and Thea were already waiting for him, along with Curtis.

“Well?” Oliver said anxiously.

“I identified another variant of the malware that infected the power utility computers,” Curtis told them. “And this one definitely has Felicity’s fingerprints on the code. It was used to skim billing data from a major health insurance provider a couple months ago—a fact they’ve been trying to keep secret, by the way. It looks like most of the purloined financial information was offloaded via FTP to a location in Russia, presumably in exchange for a lot of money.”

“Russia?” Diggle groaned. “We’re not gonna have to go to Russia again, are we?”

“Hang on,” Curtis said. “ _Most_ of the data went to Russia. But a smaller portion of it was transmitted to a drop location—basically a compromised computer used to store the stolen information where it can be accessed when needed, presumably by the perpetrator.”

“Who we believe to be Felicity?” Oliver asked, just to make sure he was following.

“Right,” Curtis confirmed. “Now, it took some pretty complicated and _definitely_ illegal poking around, but I managed to trace the location of the drop server to a computer belonging to a refrigeration company in Miami.”

“Miami?” Thea repeated, looking as confused as Oliver felt. “So is that where Felicity is?”

“No.” Curtis shook his head. “The data’s just being _stored_ in Miami. It’s being accessed by an IP address somewhere else altogether.”

“Where?” Oliver asked, getting impatient.

“That, I don’t know,” Curtis said. “She’s using OTR through TOR with an SSL proxy to the IM communications server so I can’t backtrace the IP.”

“Was any of that English?” Diggle asked, throwing up his hands.

“Curtis, for the love of god,” Oliver said, rubbing his temples, “do you know where Felicity is or not?”

“815 W. Emmanuel, just outside of downtown,” Curtis said smugly, folding his arms.

“How …” Oliver blinked. “How did you—”

“I accessed the stolen data that was stored on the drop server, and it just so happens that one of the stolen social security numbers was used to create a false identity, right here in Star City. Someone opened a bank account, applied for credit cards, and rented an apartment, all under the name Wendy White. And Wendy White used her new ATM card last week, which is how I was able to get her picture.” Curtis spun his chair around and tapped the keyboard, bringing up a photo onscreen.

A dull ache traveled up Oliver’s esophagus and settled in his chest

“Oh, my god,” Thea said, leaning in for a closer look. “It really _is_ her.”

The photo was blurry, but it was unmistakably Felicity, sporting the same dark hair and round glasses from had the other night.

Oliver turned on his heel and headed for the stairs.

“Whoa,” Diggle said, moving to cut him off. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going to get her back,” Oliver said. “Don’t try to stop me.”

“Hey, no one’s stopping you,” Thea said, stepping in beside Diggle. “We’re helping you, remember? Let’s just talk about this for a second before you go charging off.

“Yeah, what’s the plan here?” Diggle asked.

“The plan is I talk to her,” Oliver said. He couldn’t think any further than that. He just needed to see her again, to hear her voice. To find out why she was doing this.

Diggle’s eyebrows lifted. “By yourself?”

“By myself,” Oliver confirmed. He didn’t want to risk scaring her off by showing up with the whole team. If he could just get her alone for a few minutes, if he could just _talk_ to her, maybe he could figure out what was going on.

“Without suiting up?” Thea asked.

Oliver shook his head. “I need to go in unmasked and unarmed so I don’t scare her.”

“Okay, but … the last time you talked to her she _shot_ you,” Thea pointed out.

Oliver gave his sister a look. “I don’t need to be reminded, I was there.”

“Are you sure? Because she could have killed you, and now you’re talking about going after her alone and unarmed.”

“It’s Felicity!” Oliver barked in frustration.

Thea crossed her arms and gave him her best sisterly glare. “Yeah, I know it is. The same Felicity who just shot you. And yeah—” She held up her hand, cutting him off before he could complain. “—I’m gonna keep repeating it until you act like you’re taking it seriously.”

Oliver took a deep breath. “I _am_ taking it seriously,” he told Thea calmly. “Very seriously. You’re right, she could have killed me, but the fact is, she didn’t. At that range it was an easy shot, but she only hit me in the shoulder. I think it was on purpose.”

“You mean you hope it was on purpose,” Thea said, not buying it. “Maybe she’s just a bad shot.”

“At least let us go with you,” Diggle said. “As backup.”

Oliver shook his head. “If she’s being coerced we can’t risk alerting her captors. I need to go in quietly and assess the situation. Alone.”

Diggle crossed his arms. “Then we’ll wait outside, ready to assist if anything goes wrong.”

It was too reasonable a suggestion to turn down. Oliver nodded his assent.

“And you’ll wear a comm,” Diggle added.

Oliver didn’t like it—he wasn’t thrilled about having his sister and his best friend listening in to whatever he said to Felicity—but he couldn’t argue the wisdom. “Fine.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Diggle said, heading for his gear. “Let’s go.”

✥ ✥ ✥

Wendy White was leasing an apartment on the third floor of a renovated former garment factory in an up-and-coming neighborhood on the edge of downtown. High ceilings, exposed brick walls, and only a couple of junkies and homeless people loitering in the vacant lot across the street. A young urban professional’s dream home.

“You sure you want to go in alone?” Diggle asked, twisting around in the driver’s seat to regard Oliver.

“I’m sure,” Oliver said.

Thea’s mouth turned down into a frown that reminded him sharply of their mother. “Just promise me you’re not going to let her shoot you again, all right?”

Oliver dredged up a half-hearted smile for her. “Promise.” He gave her arm a reassuring squeeze and climbed out of the van.

There was no fire escape, so he had to scale the the side of the building the hard way. Fortunately, the hundred-year-old brick provided him with plenty of hand- and footholds. A few minutes of prying at the industrial awning window with his knife and he was inside.

A quick glance around told him the apartment was empty. The furnishings were spartan: just a couch, a dining table with only one chair, and a bed. No personal effects or decorations anywhere. This wasn’t a home—it was hideout.

“I’m in,” Oliver said into the comm. “She’s not here right now, but it looks like this is where she’s been sleeping.”

He heard Diggle exhale. “Do a sweep.”

Oliver was way ahead of him. He already had his phone out and the app Felicity had installed last year open. He wandered around the apartment, checking for signs of electronic surveillance devices. There weren’t any.

“It’s clear,” he said. “Looks like I’m hanging out for a while.”

“Copy,” Diggle said. “We’ve got eyes on the street, we’ll give you a heads up if there’s any movement.”

Oliver pocketed his phone and gazed around the apartment. Wandered into the kitchen and opened a few cabinets. Someone was definitely living here. There was food in the fridge, dirty dishes in the sink. But none of it felt familiar. None of it felt like Felicity.

The coffee and the yogurt weren’t her usual brands. There were more corn chips in the pantry than he’d seen her eat the entire time he’d known her. Sweet'N Low instead of Splenda.

They were little things, but they gnawed at him.

He went into the bathroom and started pulling open drawers. Lots of women’s toiletries and make-up, but none of it familiar. Different brand of toothpaste, different face wash, different moisturizer.

The Felicity who was living here was a stranger to him.

There wasn’t much to see in the bedroom except the tangle of sheets on the unmade bed. Oliver picked up one of the pillows and pressed his face into it.

A lump formed in the back of his throat. It smelled like her. Like home. _His_ Felicity.

He hugged the pillow to his chest, blinking back tears.

He couldn’t make himself go into the closet. Instead he went and sat on the couch, facing the front door, and waited.

“Heads-up,” Diggle said, almost an hour later. “She’s coming your way.”

Oliver stood up and stretched, feeling the vertebrae pop along his spine. The sun had set while he waited, and the apartment had darkened around him.

He took up a position in the kitchen, out of sight of the front door, and squared his shoulders.

The sound of a key in the door, the creak of it opening and then closing again. A light flipped on, and then footsteps coming toward him. Oliver stepped into view.

Felicity froze, panic momentarily flaring in her expression before she tamped it down. “Who are you?” she demanded, eying him warily. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

“Felicity,” he said, moving closer.

“Oh, it’s _you,”_ she said derisively. “The freak in the green hood. I thought I shot you.”

“Your aim was a little off.”

“I’ll have to work on that.” Her hand was already emerging from her purse with the 9mm in it, but Oliver was ready for it this time.

He closed the distance between them and grabbed her wrist before she could get off a shot, twisting until she cried out and let go of the gun. He thumbed the safety on and tossed it onto the couch, well out of reach. Her purse had fallen to the floor in the scuffle, and he nudged it away with his foot.

“Well, shit,” she said, scowling. Oliver still had a vice-grip on her wrist, but she didn’t try to pull away. Just glared at him stonily.

He searched her face for signs of recognition. For some indiction of the Felicity he knew. “You really don’t know me, do you?” he said finally.

“Should I?”

“Yes,” he said. “We were engaged. We were in love.”

She huffed out a mocking laugh. “Sure. Okay.”

“Felicity—”

“That’s not my name.”

“Yes it is. And my name’s Oliver.”

She shrugged. “If you say so.”

“You’re Felicity Megan Smoak. You were born February 10, 1989. You grew up in Las Vegas. Your mother is named Donna and she still lives there. You went to MIT when you were sixteen and you have a masters in computer science.”

She didn’t say anything, but some of her brashness had faded. She looked almost … uncertain.

Oliver pressed on. “We’ve known each other for five years. I asked you to marry me last year and you said yes. You were the CEO of Queen Inc. until you were abducted from our apartment the night before our wedding, almost five months ago.”

“That’s not true,” she said, but with a fraction of her former vehemence.

“Felicity, I’m not here to hurt you.”

“ _That’s not my name.”_

“I love you, Felicity. Me, your mother, all of your friends, we’ve all been out of our minds with worry. I’ve been searching for you for months.”

“No.” She shook her head, but there were cracks forming in her confidence.

“I love you,” he said again, because it was the most important thing that he wanted her to know.

“Stop saying that!”

“You have no idea how relieved I am to have found you again. Please, Felicity.”

“Let go of me,” she demanded shakily. _“Let go of me!”_ She was trembling in his grasp, her eyes wide and fearful.

She was terrified. Not just of what he was saying, but _of him._ The realization made Oliver feel sick.

He let go of her wrist and she sank to the floor. He knelt down, reaching out for her, to comfort her. “Felicity—”

He didn’t see that her right hand had slipped into her purse until it was too late. It came up, clutching a canister of pepper spray. She got him right in the eyes.

Oliver cried out in pain and grabbed blindly for her. He almost managed to get ahold of her, but she twisted and slipped out of his grasp.

In between the waves of agony, he heard her footsteps running away, and the door of the apartment being thrown open.

It took him a second to register Diggle’s concerned shouts over the comm. “I’m okay,” Oliver groaned. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck._ ”

“What happened?”

“She pepper sprayed me and ran.”

Oliver was pretty sure he heard Thea snicker. He chose to ignore it in favor of wishing he was dead.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been pepper sprayed (college fraternity prank gone wrong), but it was definitely the worst. There was no problem with Felicity’s aim this time. She’d unloaded the whole cannister directly into his face. Solid bullseye.

“I’m going after her,” Diggle said.

“Negative,” Oliver barked, coughing capsaicin out of his lungs.

Despite Felicity’s parting gift to him, he felt like he’d been getting through to her before she got scared off. If they forcibly grabbed her on the street it’d undo all the progress he’d made. He had to win her trust. It was the only way to get her back.

“Come again?” Diggle said.

“Let her go,” Oliver ordered. “I don’t want to scare her anymore than I already have.”

There was a pause, then: “Hang tight, we’re coming to get you.”

Oliver curled up in ball and tried not to claw his own eyes out.

 


	5. Chapter 5

It had taken over a dozen eye baths before the burning subsided to moderately tolerable levels. Almost twenty-four hours later, Oliver’s eyes were still puffy and bloodshot and sore. He looked like he’d been on the biggest bender of his life. And that was saying something, considering he’d been on some fairly stupendous benders.

“So does getting pepper sprayed count as better or worse than getting shot?” Thea asked, leaning back in her chair and propping her feet up on the seat next to her.

They were all back in the lair, Curtis included, gathered around the big conference table having a … well, a conference.

Oliver ignored his sister. “She remembered me,” he insisted, pacing around the table like a nervous Rottweiler. “Or she started to, anyway.”

“I guess that’s why she pepper sprayed you,” Thea said, enjoying herself a little too much.

“It’s not funny,” Oliver snapped, shooting her a look.

“It’s a little funny,” Thea said. “I mean, Felicity’s amnesia isn’t funny, obviously. But her pepper spraying you? Hilarious.”

“Yeah, except for the part about her taking off and us just letting her,” Diggle said sourly. He was standing with his arms folded, radiating disapproval in Oliver’s direction.

“I’m actually a little unclear on that part myself,” Curtis said, pushing his glasses up his nose.

Oliver braced his arms on the table and let his head hang down. “What were we supposed to do? Toss her in the back of the van and tie her up? Keep her in the cage downstairs?”

Curtis’ eyes widened at the mention of the cage, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Oliver figured it was safe to assume that throwing Felicity in a cage wasn’t something he was keen to do.

Diggle, apparently, felt otherwise. “Yeah, maybe,” he growled, leaning forward and gripping the back of the chair in front of him like he wanted to break it in half. “If that’s what it takes to get her back.”

Oliver looked at Thea. “Is that what you think I should have done?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “It didn’t seem like she was in any danger. Or like she’s being held against her will.”

“She doesn’t even know who she is,” Diggle snapped. “She doesn’t _know_ her own will.”

“She knows her own mind,” Oliver insisted. “If we bring her in by force, we haven’t really gotten her back at all. She’s never going to trust us after something like that. We have to convince her she wants to come back. We have to help her get her memories back.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Thea asked, scrunching her forehead.

“I don’t know,” Oliver said. “I’m still working on that. But I know I can get through to her. I was starting to last night.”

“Really?” Diggle snorted. “’Cause from where we were sitting, it sounded like she didn’t know you from Adam and she didn’t want to.”

“It was in her eyes. I think she started to remember, and it freaked her out. That’s why she ran.”

“She knows who you are now,” Diggle said. “And that you’re the Green Arrow. You think about that? She could expose you.”

“She won’t,” Oliver said.

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

“I am.” He wasn’t, but he had to believe it it was true. The alternative was unthinkable.

“Either way, we're still gonna need to find her again,” Thea said.

“I’ve got alerts set up for all the identities stored on that drop server,” Curtis offered. “If she uses any of them, I’ll be able to track her.”

Diggle shook his head. “No way she’s going back to that apartment, now that she knows it’s been compromised.”

Oliver straightened. “Unless she decides she wants to be found.”

Diggle looked surprised. “You really that optimistic?”

“Let’s just say I have reason to hope—for the first time in months, Dig. _Months._ ”

Diggle gave Oliver a long, measuring look, like he was trying to decide if he was unhinged or not. After a second he lifted his chin. Oliver decided to take it as assent.

“So—what? We just do nothing?” Thea said.

“For today,” Oliver said. “Ask me again tomorrow and I might give you a different answer.”

By unanimous decision they elected to forgo patrolling that night; no one was much in the mood and anyway Oliver’s eyes were still burning like a sonofabitch. Curtis headed home to his husband, Diggle to a much-needed evening with his wife and daughter, and Thea to do whatever it was Thea did on her nights off. Oliver suspected a date, but he’d learned the hard way that his life was much easier when he didn’t inquire into the details of his little sister’s sex life.

Oliver waited until the others had all left, and then he drove straight over to the apartment on Emmanuel. Diggle and Thea would have given him hell if they’d known that’s where he was headed, which was exactly why he hadn’t told them. He didn’t really think Felicity would be there, anyway, he just had to make sure. He just wanted to look at the place again, to feel close to her.

Instead of scaling the the wall, this time he walked up to the front door and knocked, not even trying to hide his presence.

No answer.

He tried the knob; it was unlocked. He pushed it open.

She hadn’t been back since yesterday, that much was apparent. The place reeked of capsaicin, making Oliver’s eyes burn and tear anew and his nose drip like a leaky faucet. Felicity’s purse still lay on the floor next to the discarded can of pepper spray, and the milk Diggle had used to flush Oliver’s eyes was still sitting out on the counter. The gun was gone, but Oliver was pretty sure she’d grabbed it on her way out yesterday. It was the only thing she’d bothered to take.

He could only stand to be inside the apartment for a minute before he ducked back into the hall, sucking clean air into his lungs. Oliver wasn’t sure what he’d been hoping to find, but whatever it was, it wasn’t here. He pulled the door shut behind him and drove home.

When he let himself into the loft twenty minutes later, he immediately sensed that something was off. His hand was reaching for the folding knife in his pocket even before he saw the outline of a figure standing by the balcony door.

And then the outline resolved itself into an achingly familiar silhouette. Oliver froze as Felicity turned and looked at him.

“I used to be blonde,” she said, holding up the framed photo of the two of them she’d gotten off the desk.

“You did,” he managed levelly, despite the fact that his heart was pounding out a Sousa march in his chest.

She put the picture down, regarding him warily. “You’re not going to try to grab me, are you? I brought more pepper spray.”

“No,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’m not chasing you anymore.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

“Because I can’t force you to come back to me. You have to want to.”

She looked at him for a long moment before turning and picking up another photo. It was the one from Positano, where he had his arms around her, hugging her from behind. She bent her head to study it, her dark hair falling around her face. “Apparently I renamed my company after you.”

Oliver’s breath caught in his throat. “You’ve been checking out what I told you.”

She set the photo back on the desk. “There wasn’t much to find, except for some press releases buried on the company intranet. Nothing in the news about my supposed abduction.”

“That’s because someone’s been launching cyberattacks on media organizations, systematically erasing references to you from the internet.”

Oliver was a struggling to stay calm. Part of him was terrified this was a hallucination, that he’d finally gone crazy and his mind was playing cruel tricks on him. But no, Felicity was _here,_ and she was talking to him. She was actually _listening_ to him. He had a chance to get through to her if he could just manage not to fuck it up.

Her forehead crinkled. “Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It wasn’t you?”

She shook her head, frowning. Her gaze wandered around the loft, then back to him. “Why did I give my company your name?”

Oliver smiled faintly. “You said it was going to be your name soon, so really you were naming it after yourself.”

She nodded slowly. And then she said: “My father told me I was in a car accident.”

“Your father?” Last Oliver had heard, Felicity’s father was in Europe. He’d made a plea agreement with the federal prosecutor in exchange for giving up information on certain criminal organizations he’d worked for. After six months in a federal country club prison he’d hopped a plane to San Marino and hadn’t been heard from since.

He was one of the people Oliver had looked into when Felicity first disappeared, but they hadn’t been able to find any indication that he was involved, or that he’d even been back in the country since he got out of prison.

“I suffered a traumatic brain injury that caused an intracerebral hemorrhage,” Felicity said. “That’s why I can’t remember anything from before a few months ago.”

“I don’t know if he’s really your father, but he’s lying,” Oliver said. “You were kidnapped. From this very apartment, the night before our wedding.” He could feel his face twisting and fought for control of himself. “I looked for you, Felicity. For months. I looked _everywhere_ for you.”

She shook her head again. “It was a car accident. In Switzerland. The car in front of me blew a tire and I hit the concrete barrier. I was in a coma for two days. When I woke up I was disoriented and I couldn’t remember who I was or what had happened. For the first week or so I couldn’t even remember things from one hour to the next. My father was at my side the whole time. He took care of me, and eventually my short-term memory got better. But my long-term memories never returned.”

Oliver’s chest constricted. He couldn’t imagine how awful it must have been for her, lost and confused and alone in the world. Disconnected from everything she knew and everyone she cared about. At the mercy of a stranger claiming to be her father. The same man who’d probably kidnapped her.

“What did he tell you your name was?” Oliver asked.

“Megan.”

“That’s your middle name. What did he tell you his name was?”

“Noah. Noah Kuttler.”

Oliver grimaced. “That’s your father, but … you can’t trust him.”

“Why not? If he’s really my father?”

“He’s a criminal.”

“So what?” she shot back. “You’re a criminal, too, right? You’re a dangerous vigilante, wanted by the police.”

Oliver shook his head. “You hated him. He abandoned you and your mother when you were a kid. You even turned him in to the police last year, when he tried to steal tech from your company. He must have kidnapped you and erased your memories somehow, and then fed you this story about a car accident.”

Felicity barked out a harsh laugh. “Can you hear how ridiculous that sounds? Why would he do that?”

“To get you back in his life.”

“You said it was the night before we were supposed to get married. Maybe I ran away on my own. Maybe I was running away from _you.”_

“You wouldn’t do that,” Oliver insisted. “You loved me. We were happy.”

“Says you.”

“Felicity …” He took a tentative step towards her. “Don’t you feel anything when you look at me? Anything at all?”

She pressed her lips together and turned away, looking out at the city skyline. When she finally spoke, her voice was so quiet he had to strain to hear her. “My father showed me some computer code and told me I’d written it. And as soon as I saw it, I understood it. It was like … suddenly hearing your native language again after weeks in a foreign country. I looked at it and I just knew, intuitively, exactly what it did and how it worked. It was the first thing that felt familiar to me.”

Oliver nodded slowly. “That’s why you believed him. Because he showed you something you loved. The one thing you both had in common.”

She turned back to him, her expression hard. “You’re telling me I should doubt him, but I don’t _know_ you. Why should I take your word over his?”

“I know _you,”_ Oliver said desperately. “You can’t cook, even though you won’t give up trying. Your favorite ice cream is mint chocolate chip. You hate red peppers but you love my curry …” He racked his brain for things that were hard-wired, things that wouldn’t change no matter what happened to her. “You despise the sound of people chewing. You’re afraid of heights. And cockroaches—all bugs, really, but especially cockroaches. And you’re allergic to nuts.”

Her mouth formed into an _oh_. _“That’s_ why I broke out in hives.”

Oliver took a step closer. “Your father didn’t warn you to avoid nuts because he didn’t know. He doesn’t know you because he’s never been a part of your life. I have. We chose each other, Felicity. We built a life together. It was a life you wanted.”

She chewed on her lower lip. “I have all these scars—” She laid her hands across her stomach. “—here.”

Oliver swallowed. Nodded. “You were shot.”

“That’s what my father told me. He said it was during a job that went wrong last year.”

“No.” Oliver shook his head. “No, it was the night we got engaged. I was running for mayor and there was an assassination attempt. In the limo on the way home. I tried to shield you but …” He blinked back tears as memories of her broken, bloodied body flooded back to him.

Her eyes widened. “I was in a wheelchair,” she whispered.

Oliver’s heart leapt into his throat. “You remember!”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.

“Do you remember any of the good times? Do you remember Bali? Or Ivy Town? We had a little house on a quiet street and—”

“I can’t … I can’t do this.” She ran past him, headed for the door.

“Felicity, wait!”

She paused, her hand on the door handle, but she didn’t look at him.

“I just …” He wanted to run to her and grab on to her and never let go. He wanted to hold her so badly his whole body was aching with it. “I just miss you so much.”

“I have to go,” she said, her voice breaking a little.

Oliver reached out for her, but his hand closed on empty air.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Early the next morning, after a night spent doing a lot more tossing and turning than sleeping, Oliver presented himself at Dig and Lyla’s door.

Diggle took one look at the hollows under his eyes and led him into the kitchen where Lyla, still in her robe, was feeding Sara a breakfast of waffles smeared with cream cheese and jam. Over coffee around the kitchen table, Oliver told them about his visit from Felicity.

“So you were right,” Diggle said when he was through. “She came and found you.”

Oliver shook his head. “She ran again, though, Dig. I couldn’t convince her to stay.”

Sara presented Oliver with a soggy piece of waffle, and he mustered a smile for her, thanking her graciously before surreptitiously slipping it into Lyla’s outstretched hand under the table.

“At least she didn’t inflict any bodily harm on her way out the door this time,” Diggle pointed out as he cleared away the remains of Sara’s breakfast. “That’s progress.”

Lyla got up to wipe the jam from Sara’s face and fingers. “It’s got to be scary for her,” she said, shaking her head. “No memories of her past, no idea who to believe.”

Oliver scrubbed his hand over his face. “I can’t stop thinking about what it must have been like for her. How alone she must have felt. I hate so much that she went through all of that and I wasn’t there for her.”

Lyla scooped Sara out of her booster seat and deposited her on Oliver’s lap while she finished wiping down the table. The three-year-old’s pudgy arms wound around his neck, her breath warm and strawberry-scented on his cheek. Reflexively, his arms banded around her, and something loosened in deep his chest.

Sara pulled back, gazing into his face with a solemn expression. She rubbed a sticky palm over his cheek and her little face puckered into a frown. “Your beard is pokey,” she declared.

“Yep,” Oliver agreed, huffing out a faint laugh. “It sure is.”

“You’ve definitely got her doubting her father’s story,” Diggle said. “I mean, she started looking into herself, she’s gotta know it doesn’t all hold up.” He set a coloring book and box of crayons on the table in front of Oliver and Sara.

“And she looked into _you,_ ” Lyla pointed out, sitting back down and reaching for her coffee. “She found out where you live and she sought you out.”

Diggle nodded. “She’s asking questions. Testing you. It’s a good sign.”

“This whole car accident story, though.” Oliver shook his head, steadying Sara on his lap as she reached for the crayons. “I don’t know what to make of it. It can’t be true, can it?”

Diggle leaned back against the counter, frowning. “Sounds like a cover to me. If she’d actually suffered a traumatic brain injury like that, more than just her memory would have been affected. She’d be dealing with a whole range of physical and cognitive deficits. Loss of motor skills, speech, cognitive reasoning. She’d have needed months of rehabilitation—even years, maybe.”

“There are experimental drugs that can induce memory loss in combination with electroconvulsive therapy,” Lyla said. “Or so I’ve heard,” she added off of her husband’s raised eyebrows.

The mention of electroshock made Oliver want to throw up. He couldn't help imagining Felicity strapped to a table, convulsing as an electric current was pumped into her brain.

“Are the effects permanent?” he asked, swallowing.

“They can be,” Lyla admitted. “It depends.”

Sara pushed a yellow crayon into Oliver’s hand. “Take it. You have to color, too.”

“You said she was already remembering stuff, though,” Diggle said. “She remembered being in a wheelchair, right?”

“It seemed like it,” Oliver said, leaning forward to color in Big Bird. “But she doesn’t seem to remember me. She doesn’t remember _us._ ”

“Maybe she does and she just doesn’t want to accept it,” Lyla suggested. “Look at it from her point of view: here she is, she’s just finished rebuilding a life for herself out of nothing, and then you show up and start tearing it all down again. Is it any wonder she’s resisting?”

“Give it time,” Diggle said, clapping Oliver on the back. “You’re gonna get her back.”

Sara reached up and patted Oliver’s shoulder, imitating her dad. “It’s gonna be ohhh-kay.”

Oliver stayed long enough to help Sara finish the page they were coloring before dropping a kiss on top of her head. “Gotta go,” he said, moving her off his lap.

“You sure you don’t want to stick around?” Lyla suggested. “Johnny’s got a big day of watching football planned, I’m sure he’d love the company.”

“Yeah,” Diggle said. “Come on, man, hang out for a while.”

“Another time,” Oliver promised, giving Lyla a hug. “Thanks.” He had something more pressing on his agenda today.

Back at the loft, he sat down in front of the computer and started researching memory loss on the internet.

What he found was simultaneously encouraging and discouraging. While permanent amnesia seemed to be extremely rare, it could sometimes take months or even years for lost memories to be fully recovered.

_Years._

Apparently, memories of habits and skills tended to be better preserved than memories of facts and events, which explained why Felicity had been able to understand computer code. And when memories did start to return, the older long-term memories, like those from childhood, were usually recalled first, before more recent memories were recovered.

As a starring character in Felicity’s more recent memories, Oliver found this somewhat dispiriting.

When his phone rang a few hours later he startled awake. Somehow he’d managed to fall asleep slumped over his laptop, and he had the mother of all cricks in his neck to prove it.

The call was from a private number. “Hello?” he answered warily.

“Oliver?”

His breath caught. “Felicity?” He didn’t know how she’d gotten his number and he didn’t care. He was just so relieved to hear her voice again.

“I don’t know what to do.” She sounded like she’d been crying.

He straightened and gripped the edge of the desk. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Did something happen?”

He heard her take a shaky breath. “I confronted my father. About the discrepancies in his story.”

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, he—he tried to explain them away, but …” She exhaled a shaky breath. “I could tell he was lying. He’s been lying to me all along, hasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Oliver said gently. “I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

“I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know anything anymore.”

“Do you want me to come get you?”

There was a long pause. “Yes,” she said in a small voice.

“I’m on my way,” he said, already moving toward the door, keys in hand. “Where are you?”

She gave him an address and he typed it into his GPS. It was in the South End. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he promised as he sprinted for the stairs to the parking garage.

✥ ✥ ✥

It wasn’t like Oliver hadn’t considered the possibility that Felicity was leading him into a trap. In fact, he’d considered it very thoroughly on the drive over, and decided he didn’t care.

But when he pulled up in front of the address she’d given him, the thought reared its ugly head again. It was a Mexican restaurant that had gone out of business years ago, in a mixed-use neighborhood that had been hit hard by the recession. The building was set back from the road, sandwiched between a boarded up gas station on one side and a sketchy-looking self-storage facility on the other.

Isolated, out of use, with little to no foot traffic—it was an ideal site for an ambush, the pesky warning voice in his head observed.

Once again, Oliver decided he didn’t give a damn. Felicity had said she needed him. A team of Clydesdales couldn’t drag him away from her.

His one concession to common sense was to start up the surveillance app on his phone before slipping it into his pocket. It would record everything that happened and simultaneously stream it to a backup file on the lair’s computers. If things went sideways, at least Thea and John wouldn’t have to wonder what had happened.

Oliver walked up to the front door of the restaurant and gave it a tentative tug; it was unlocked. There was light coming from the kitchen in the back, spilling out enough to illuminate a messy jumble of slashed vinyl booths and overturned tables in front of him. It smelled like like some kind of animals had taken up residence in the building—at least, Oliver hoped it was animals and not people who had been defecating on the floor.

“Felicity?” he called out.

“Back here,” came her answer from somewhere in the back.

He picked his way through the detritus and stepped into the restaurant's kitchen. Felicity was standing by the far wall, unnaturally still and stone-faced. Her Smith & Wesson 9mm was in her hand, hanging at her side.

“Felicity, why are we here?” Oliver asked with a sinking heart. Because he already knew.

He knew even before her father stepped into view, holding a matching 9mm of his own.

“Because I asked her to bring you here,” Noah Kuttler answered for her, training his gun on Oliver. “She told me about the lies you’ve been telling her, how you’ve been trying to make her doubt me.”

Oliver’s gaze stayed locked on Felicity’s. “I’m not the one who’s been lying to you,” he said, trying to pour the truth of his words into his eyes, trying to make her see how much he loved her.

She set her jaw looked away.

“My daughter called me shortly before your wedding date,” Noah said. “She told me she didn’t want to go through with it, but she was afraid to break it off, terrified of what you might do to her. She begged me to help her escape from the hell her life with you had become.”

“Felicity, I would never hurt you,” Oliver said, his stomach turning at even the suggestion that he could ever do such a thing. _“Never.”_

“I smuggled her out of the country right under your nose,” Noah said proudly, “and set her up with a brand new identity in Switzerland where she could start a new life free of fear. Tragically, the car accident happened a mere two weeks later, on the A6 just outside of Bern.” He cast a tender, pained look at Felicity. “I was at her side throughout her recovery and rehabilitation, making sure she had the very best doctors to care for her.”

Felicity’s eyes met her father’s, and her expression softened.

Oliver felt physically ill. He couldn’t believe the elaborate web of lies Noah had constructed to worm his way back into her life. The man had successfully torn her away from everything she knew and manipulated her into a state of total dependency on him.

“If it was a car accident then why was it only your memory that was affected?” Oliver asked Felicity desperately.

Noah’s gaze swung back to Oliver, hardening. “You really don’t know when to give up, do?”

He was right about that much. “A traumatic brain injury severe enough to cause that much memory loss would have left you with impairments to your motor and language skills, too,” Oliver said. “You would still be dealing with the deficits.”

“My daughter may no longer be able to remember the emotional and physical abuse you subjected her to,” Noah said, his gun still trained on Oliver, “but I will _never_ forget, because I’m her father. And I won’t let you hurt her anymore.”

It was an Oscar-worthy performance. The fact that he was actually standing there playing the protective father after everything he’d done—it’d be laughable if it wasn’t so horrific.

Oliver ignored him and pressed on, his eyes never leaving Felicity’s: “Not even five months later and you’re completely recovered except for the memory loss? Brain injuries don’t work that way. His story doesn’t hold together and he knows it.”

Felicity gazed back at him impassively. He couldn’t tell if he was getting through to her or not.

“He’s never going to let you go,” Noah told her.

“There are drugs that can induce amnesia,” Oliver persevered. “He used them on you and then fed you this story about a car accident to get you under his control. He’s manipulating you.”

“He’ll never stop hunting you,” Noah said. “You’ll never be safe, not as long as he’s still alive.”

“Felicity, _please.”_ Oliver’s insides twisted at the look of callous detachment on her face. Like he was nothing to her.

“You know what you need to do,” Noah said.

Felicity raised her gun and pointed it at Oliver.

The air rushed out of his lungs and he dropped to his knees before her. “I love you,” he said, gazing up at her with tears in his eyes. “Please don’t do this.”

It was a Hail Mary Pass. He could have tried charging either her or Noah, but at this range, with two guns pointed at him, the odds weren’t in his favor. Throwing himself on her mercy seemed like the better bet. So Oliver was laying himself bare at her feet—just like the night he’d gone down on one knee and asked her to marry him.

“I’m begging you,” he said quietly. “You’re not a killer, Felicity, don’t let him turn you into one.”

“You don’t have any choice,” Noah told her. “He’s forced your hand.”

“I know you can’t remember me right now,” Oliver pleaded, “but your memories _are_ starting to come back to you. And when they do, you’ll remember what we meant to each other, and you’ll never forgive yourself if you do this.”

“If you can’t pull the trigger then I will,” Noah said harshly, advancing on Oliver.

In one smooth motion, Felicity swung the gun towards her father and fired. He staggered, his face frozen in an expression of surprise, and then he toppled backwards like a bowling pin.

Oliver surged to his feet, but Felicity’s gun pivoted back to him. “Don’t,” she warned, and he froze. She walked over to her father and kicked his gun away, out of reach in the corner of the room.

Noah gaped up at her from the floor, clutching his bleeding shoulder. She’d shot him in the exact same place she’d shot Oliver.

“How could you?” she hissed, leveling her gun at her father again.

“Megan—”

Her nostrils flared. “That’s not my name, is it?”

“Please, sweetheart, he’s just trying to trick you. I know it must be confusing, after everything you’ve been through—”

“ _Stop lying!”_ Felicity screamed.

Noah’s mouth snapped shut.

“You made up the car accident, didn’t you?”

Noah shook his head.

Felicity’s boot came down on his shoulder, grinding against the bullet wound, and he screamed.

Oliver took an involuntary step towards her. She threw him a warning glare before turning her attention back to her father. _“Didn’t you?”_

“Yes,” Noah gasped.

“Did you abduct me from my home?” When he didn’t answer right away her foot applied a little more pressure.

“Yes!”

“How?”

“I hired professionals.”

Her jaw clenched. “You mean professional kidnappers?”

Noah nodded. “A group of mercenaries out of Venezuela. I’d had you under surveillance for months so they knew all your routines. All they had to do was bribe a valet at your favorite restaurant to make a copy of your keys and let themselves in after you’d fallen asleep. They drugged you and transported you out of the city in the back of a semi-trailer. You were already in the air aboard a private plane to Switzerland before anyone even knew you were missing.”

Which explained why there hadn’t been any forensic evidence at the scene. He’d hired experts, the kind of hardened criminals who routinely carried out abductions for ransom. The kind of men who knew exactly how to disappear people smoothly and efficiently, without leaving a trace.

It was unimaginable, that the man would willingly put his own daughter’s life into the hands of such people. And yet it wasn’t even the worst thing he’d done to her, not by a wide mile.

Oliver had never wanted to kill anyone quite as badly as he wanted to kill Noah Kuttler right now. He didn’t just want to put a bullet between the man’s eyes, he wanted to cut him into pieces, burn the remains, and sow the ashes with salt.

“What about the memory loss?” Felicity asked. “How did you pull that off?”

Noah actually had the nerve to look smug. “A neuropharmacologist I did some work for in Europe came up with the formula. A cocktail of anxiogenic agents, NMDA receptor antagonists, and interferons, administered in combination with ECT.”

Felicity blanched. “How could you?” she whispered. The hand holding the gun was white-knuckled and trembling.

Oliver edged closer. She was so focused on her father she didn’t seem to notice.

Noah gazed at her, brazenly unrepentant. For a genius, he wasn’t very smart, apparently. “It was the only way I could undo my past mistakes. The only way I could make you love me again.”

“ _You gave me brain damage,”_ Felicity shouted, aiming the gun at her father’s head, right between his eyes.

“Felicity,” Oliver said sharply. He couldn’t let her do this. She’d be haunted for the rest of her life if she killed her father, and he couldn’t let that happen. No matter how much her father deserved killing.

“I just wanted my daughter back,” Noah said, as if that could excuse everything he’d done. “We’re so much alike, I knew if you’d only give me a chance, you’d see how much I love—”

Oliver kicked him in the head, hard enough to knock him out so he’d shut the fuck up.

Felicity let out a long, ragged breath.

“It’s over,” Oliver said, carefully reaching for the gun in her hand.

She let him take it from her. He flipped the safety on and set it on the counter, then slipped his phone out of his pocket and turned off the recording app. He’d captured all of Noah’s confession, and the file was safely backed up on the lair’s computer.

When he turned back to Felicity she was shaking, tears spilling silently down her cheeks.

“Hey,” he said gently. “You’re okay.” Tentatively, he reached out for her, his hand landing on her shoulder. When she didn’t pull away he stepped in closer. After a moment’s hesitation he wrapped his arms around her.

She stiffened for a second, and then her whole body sagged against his. She pressed her face into his chest, sobbing.

His hand covered the back of her head. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got you, you’re safe.”

It had been so long since he’d held her, he felt like his heart was going to explode. His muscles were trembling with the effort it took not to lift her off her feet and bury his face in her hair, weeping with happiness. Oliver squeezed his eyes shut against the tears blurring his vision and took a shaky breath.

Felicity pushed away from him abruptly, sniffling. “Sorry,” she said, wiping her cheek with the heel of her hand. “I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s okay,” he told her, feeling bereft at the sudden loss of contact.

“No,” she said, shaking her head and backing away. “It’s really not. I …” She stopped and looked away, pressing her lips together.

Oliver waited, his heart in his throat, to hear what she had to say.

When she finally looked back at him her expression was pained. “I’m not—I don’t feel what you want me to feel. I can’t be who you want me to be.”

“Felicity,” he said helplessly. “I don’t want you to be anyone other than yourself.”

She looked like she might start crying again, but instead she took a deep, shuddering breath and bit down on her lower lip. Her eyes went to her father, lying unconscious and bleeding on the floor.“You should go,” she said flatly.

“What? No. I’m not leaving you, not now.”

She shook her head again, her fists clenching at her sides. “I’m going to turn myself in. I can try to keep you out of it, but only if you’re not here when the police show up.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “You’re the victim here. The police are going to see that.”

She barked out a rueful laugh. “I just shot my father.”

“A known criminal who was about to shoot me. Who kidnapped you. Felicity, he _tortured_ you. He just admitted as much. Not only can I testify to it, but I recorded the whole conversation.”

“I’m wanted for the Queen Incorporated break in. And probably others.”

“Which you committed under extreme duress. A good lawyer will have no trouble making that case under the circumstances. Look …” Oliver ran his hand through his hair. “I know I wasn’t there for you when you needed me before, and I can never make up for that, but let me be there for you now. I can help you. Just … let me call our lawyer and go with you to talk to the police. Okay?”

She looked at him for a long moment. And then she nodded.

Oliver blew out a breath. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, taking out his phone. “I promise.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

It had been a long time since Oliver had been a guest in one of the SCPD’s interrogation rooms. The grubby walls, the uncomfortable chair, the unsettling certainty that you were being watched—he hadn’t missed it even a little bit.

Felicity was in another room just like this one, somewhere down the hall. Being questioned by the police.

Right after he’d gotten off with 911, Oliver had called their family lawyer and explained the situation. The firm’s top criminal defense attorney, Nina Bozeman, had met them at the police precinct where they were brought after Noah was put into an ambulance. She’d gone with Felicity and Oliver had been put into his own interrogation room and left alone to wait.

The waiting was driving him out of his mind. His palms felt itchy, and he rubbed them on his thighs and then gripped the sides of his chair, hard enough to feel the metal edge biting into his skin. He hated this. Hated being separated from Felicity. He’d told her he wasn’t leaving her, and yet here he was, completely failing to be by her side, unable to do anything but sit on his hands and wait.

After he'd been waiting about an hour, Nina came in with two SCPD detectives. She sat next to Oliver while he summarized the events leading up to his 911 call and answered questions—or not, as Nina advised him. At her prompting he played the recording he’d made of the confrontation with Noah. The detectives asked him a lot of questions. Then they played it again and asked even more.

Eventually, the lead detective informed them that Oliver was free to go.

“What about Felicity?” he asked.

“She’s gonna need to answer some more questions,” the detective said, pushing himself to his feet.

Nina gave Oliver an encouraging nod and followed the detectives out of the room.

Diggle was waiting for him in the hallway outside the precinct bullpen. Oliver had sent him and Thea a brief text earlier to let them know what was happening, but he hadn’t had time to give many details.

As soon as he saw Oliver, Dig stood up from the bench he’d been slumped on. His eyes were shining and he was grinning from ear to ear as he pulled Oliver into an enthusiastic hug. “We got her back, man. You did it.”

“Yeah,” Oliver muttered, blinking hard. It still didn’t feel real to him.

Diggle dragged him down the hall to the vending machine, and Oliver filled him in on everything that had happened over two cups of what was quite possibly the worst coffee he’d ever tasted.

When he was done, Diggle shook his head. “I don’t understand how a man could do something like that to his own daughter.”

Oliver tipped back the dregs of his coffee and made a face. “Yeah, he’s really giving Malcolm Merlyn a run for his money in the World’s Worst Dad competition.”

Which reminded him … there were about a dozen enthusiastic texts from Thea on his phone. He typed out a reply to let her know everything was fine and that he’d call her tomorrow.

“But she’s okay?” Diggle asked.

“Yeah,” Oliver said, smiling faintly. “Yeah, I mean, she still doesn’t remember me … or anything, really. But otherwise she seems okay.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I’ve really got her back.”

In a manner of speaking, anyway. She didn’t know him at all, and she apparently didn’t feel anything when she looked at him.

She didn’t love him.

That was a cold, hard reality to accept. As relieved as he was to have her safe and sound, every single time she looked at him like he was a complete stranger, it was like a knife in his heart.

“Hey, her memories are gonna come back,” Diggle said, reading his expression. “You’ve just gotta give it time. What matters is she’s safe.”

Oliver nodded. And then something occurred to him. “Shit.” He stood up, fumbling for his phone. “I’ve gotta—I’ve gotta call her mother. I don’t want her to hear about it on the news.”

“Yeah,” Diggle agreed. “Good idea.”

Oliver stepped into the relative quiet of the stairwell and scrolled through his phone with shaking fingers.

It wasn’t an easy conversation. Obviously Donna was ecstatic to hear that Felicity was alive and safe. But she was heartsick to hear what had happened to her, and devastated that it was Noah who’d done it. She was also spitting mad. At one point she was cursing her ex-husband’s name so vehemently that Oliver had to hold the phone away from his ear to protect his eardrum.

Eventually, she calmed down enough to talk at a reasonable volume again.

And then began the heavy lifting of convincing her not to jump on a plane for Star City right away. Oliver understood why she wanted to, and if it had been him he wasn’t sure anything would have been able to stop him, but he didn’t think the sudden appearance of a mother Felicity couldn’t remember was necessarily the best thing for her recovery. He tried to make Donna understand that, as gently as he could.

She finally agreed to hold off, at least until Oliver had had a chance to talk to Felicity about it and find out what she wanted.

“You did it,” Donna told him tearfully before she hung up. “You promised me you’d get her back and you did.”

Oliver really wished people would stop patting him on the back for bringing Felicity home. He didn’t feel like he’d done anything to deserve it.

“How’d it go?” Diggle asked when Oliver wandered back to the bench in the hall where he was waiting.

“About how you’d expect,” Oliver said with a grimace. “I just barely managed to talk her out of—” He stopped when he saw Felicity coming out of the interrogation room with her lawyer.

Diggle stood up and turned around.

Nina stopped to confer with the lead detective and Felicity came toward them, casting a wary look at Diggle.

John was grinning again, practically bouncing on his heels like a big kid. Oliver was a little worried he was going to grab Felicity and hug her, but he seemed to get himself in hand as she approached, and he just gave her low-key nod. “John Diggle,” he said, sticking out his hand. “But my friends call me Dig.”

Felicity looked at him for a long moment before she took his hand. “Am I one of your friends?” she asked uncertainly.

“You are,” he said, eyes gleaming. “One of the very best.”

“Is everything okay?” Oliver asked, casting an anxious glance at the lawyer and the detective, who were still huddled in conference.

“I think so,” Felicity said. “The DA’s agreed not to press charges, in exchange for my testimony against my father.”

“That’s great,” Oliver said. “That’s excellent.”

“Yeah.” She nodded numbly. She looked pale and hollow-eyed under the harsh fluorescents of the police station.

“Well, listen, I just wanted to see for myself that you were okay,” Diggle said. “I’m gonna take off.” He gave Felicity a watery smile and laid his hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “You call me if there’s anything I can do, okay?”

“Sure,” Oliver said. “Thanks, John.”

When he was gone, Oliver turned back to Felicity. Her eyes met his and then skated away nervously, focusing on the floor.

“So, uh, are you free to go?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets for want of anything better to do with them.

“Yeah.” She nodded at her shoes. “As long as I make myself available when they need me.”

“You must be exhausted,” Oliver said. “It’s been a long a day.”

She looked up at at him. “For both of us. I don’t know how I’m supposed to to thank you for—”

“Felicity,” he said roughly. “You don’t have to do that.”

The smile she gave him was strained and sad.

“Where do you—” He hesitated. Cleared his throat. Tried again. “Where do you want to go? I mean … I could drop you somewhere or …” He left the thought hanging. She could finish it if she wanted to, but he didn’t want her to feel like he was pressuring her to do anything.

She blinked. “I …” She closed her mouth and bit her lip. “Home?” She said the word so quietly, he almost wasn’t sure he’d heard it right.

His mouth went dry. “You mean … _home_ home? Our home?” He was trying really hard not to sound too hopeful.

She nodded tentatively. “If that’s okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yes, of course it’s okay.” Something loosened in his chest and he allowed himself a small smile. “It’s where you live.”

Felicity was coming home.

His smile got bigger.

_Felicity was coming home._

✥ ✥ ✥

It wasn’t exactly the joyous homecoming he’d fantasized about during all those months she was gone, but at least it was a homecoming.

Felicity stood in the middle of the loft, gazing around her like the furniture might bite and hugging her arms to her chest. It was habit Oliver remembered from when he first knew her. Over time, as they’d grown closer and come to rely on each other more and more, she’d given it up in favor of reaching out for him whenever she needed comfort.

 _God,_ he wanted so badly for her to reach out for him now. Or for her to give him a sign that she wanted him to reach out to her. He wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be okay, but he wasn’t sure his comfort would be welcome.

He was pretty certain it wasn’t, in fact. So he jammed his hands into his pockets and kept his distance.

She was home. She was safe. That was what mattered. Everything else could come later.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I could whip something up.”

She shook her head. “I just want to go to sleep.” Her mouth twisted ruefully. “Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and all of this will have been a bad dream.”

Oliver knew the feeling. “I’ll show you where the bedroom is, then,” he said, starting for the stairs.

“I kind of already know where it is,” she said.

Oliver stopped and turned back to her. Was the loft familiar to her? Were her memories starting to come back?

“I mean I sort of poked around when I was here before,” she clarified.

He clamped his mouth shut. “Right.”

“I wanted to see if any of seemed familiar. I’m still not sure if I was hoping it would or it wouldn’t.” She shook her head.

“Did it?” he asked, trying not to get his hopes up.

The look she gave him was pitying. “Not even a little. Sorry.”

Oliver tried to school his disappointed expression, probably failed. “It’s okay.” He started up the stairs again.

When they got to the master bedroom he flipped on the light. Felicity hung back in the doorway and stared at the king-sized bed. Their bed.

He cleared his throat. “I’m just—I’m gonna grab some things out of the bathroom and then … I’ll sleep in the guest room, okay?”

“I can take the guest room,” she said. “I don’t want to put you out of your own bed.”

“It’s _your_ bed,” Oliver told her. “And maybe it’ll help you remember. You know, being in a familiar place.”

He went into the bathroom to grab his toothbrush and a change of clothes from the closet. When he came back out, Felicity was still standing by the door, twisting her hands together nervously.

“You should try to make yourself at home,” he said gently. “Everything that’s here belongs to you.”

 _Including me,_ he thought, but didn’t say.

She nodded vaguely, without looking at him.

Not touching her was physically painful. He ached to pull her into his arms and bury his face in her neck. To inhale the scent of her hair. To taste her lips again. Having her so close but still out of reach was agony.

“If you need anything, I’ll be right down the hall,” he told her.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

“Goodnight,” Oliver said, and went to go sleep in the guest room. Alone.

✥ ✥ ✥

When he finally dropped off to sleep, hours later, Oliver dreamed of Felicity. Of making love to her in their old bed in Ivy Town. He woke up rock hard, fully expecting to find her lying next to him.

She wasn’t. He was alone, in an unfamiliar bed in the guest room of his own home.

He threw his arm across his forehead and stared at the ceiling, waiting for dawn. He didn’t get up until he heard the sound of the shower turning on in the master bathroom, sometime after eight.

When Felicity came downstairs twenty minutes later, Oliver was making breakfast. “Morning,” he said, as she wandered into the kitchen.

She was wearing her favorite terrycloth robe, her hair wet and combed back away from her face.

The dark brown hair still took him by surprise. Even though it was her natural color, it looked out of place on her. Her golden blonde tresses had always felt like a pure extension of her personality. Bright, sunny Felicity. His warm, shining light. It felt like her light had been dampened.

“This was hanging on the hook,” she said, self-consciously tugging the neck of her robe closed. “I hope it’s okay that I borrowed it.”

He gave her an encouraging smile. “It’s not borrowing, Felicity, it’s your robe. All the clothes upstairs are yours.”

She nodded and he turned back to the stove. “There’s coffee in the French press,” he said, pushing the eggs around in the pan

“Oh, thank god,” she said, making a beeline for it.

Oliver smiled to himself. Her morning caffeine addiction was clearly one thing that hadn’t changed.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her hesitate before opening and closing several cabinets in search of the mugs, and his smile faded again. He’d hoped that being back in the loft would trigger some kind of sense memories, or at the very least muscle memories of the routines that had made up the pattern of their life together.

Evidently not.

She ignored her favorite flowered mug and grabbed one of the ones they usually gave to guests. Frowned at the bowl of Splenda briefly before spooning it into her cup. Didn’t bother adding any cream at all.

“You sleep okay?” Oliver asked as she slid onto one of the seats at the breakfast bar across from him.

She made a non-committal sound, which he took to mean she’d slept about as well as he had.

He turned his attention back to the stove, but he felt her eyes on him as he added a handful of grated Gruyère to the omelet he was making, followed by diced pancetta and minced chives.

“So you cook, huh?” She sounded surprised.

He carefully folded the omelet in half and nodded. “I cook.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for the _Master Chef_ type.”

He flipped the omelet expertly, with a little more flair than was strictly necessary. “I like to think I’m more of an _Iron Chef.”_

It earned him a thin smile, nothing more.

“Thank you,” she said when he slid the omelet onto the plate in front of her.

“You’re welcome.” He rinsed the pan out before taking his own omelet out of the warming drawer. He ate it standing up over the sink.

“This is really good,” she said. Again, she sounded surprised.

“It’s your favorite. Well, my chocolate chip pancakes are your favorite, but you’re always saying you need to eat more protein. You’re kind of a carboholic.”

She looked down at her plate, frowning.

“Sorry.” He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “It must be weird for you when I do that—talk about you like I know you.”

“It is, a little.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted, because honesty had always worked best for them. It was one of the most important things she’d taught him—how to admit when he was struggling. “I’m almost as lost as you are right now. But we’re going to figure it out, okay?”

She gave him a small smile. It was so tentative and fragile it broke his heart.

They finished eating their omelets in silence. When she was done, Felicity carried her plate around to the sink. “I’ve got it,” Oliver said, relieving her of it.

While he was loading the dishwasher she wandered over to look at the collection of pictures and postcards tacked to the the side of the cabinet. “Is that my mother?” she asked.

Oliver straighted and turned around. “Yeah. Do you recognize her?”

She took the photo down and peered at it more closely. It was from their engagement party last year. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s more like a feeling than a specific memory.”

“What kind of feeling?” he asked, struggling to keep his expression neutral.

“Familiarity? But maybe it’s just because she looks like me.”

“You two are practically clones,” Oliver said. “Physically, anyway. Personality … not so much.”

Felicity looked up at him. “What’s she like?”

“She’s … uh …” He floundered for a diplomatic answer. “Enthusiastic. And uninhibited. Definitely her own person.”

“Were we close?”

“Yeah. I mean, you get along about as well as any daughter gets along with her mother. She drives you crazy sometimes, but you love each other. That’s family, you know?” As the words left his lips he realized that probably she didn’t know. She didn’t remember any family except her few months under Noah’s twisted control.

She looked back down at the photo again, her expression almost … wistful?

“Do you want—do you want to talk to her?” Oliver asked. “I could call her for you. I know she’d love to hear your voice.”

Felicity was quiet for a moment. And then she nodded.

Oliver pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed Donna. She answered on the first ring. “How is she? Has she remembered anything yet?” The desperate mix of hope and anxiety in her voice made his chest clench.

“She’s fine,” he told her, glancing at Felicity and giving her a reassuring smile. “But no, not yet.”

“Oh.”

“She wants to talk to you, though.”

“She does?” Donna squealed into the phone, and Oliver winced. “I mean, she does?” she repeated more calmly, getting ahold of herself.

“Yeah, hang on.” He held the phone out to Felicity.

She looked at it like it was a bomb that was about to go off, but she took a deep breath and reached out a shaking hand to take it from him. “Hello?” she said tentatively.

He could hear the high-pitched clamor of Donna’s excited utterances on the other end. Felicity turned her back on him and walked a few steps away. “I’m okay,” she murmured. “Uh huh, yeah, he told me.”

Oliver went upstairs to take a shower and give them some privacy.

This had to be a good sign. The fact that Donna’s picture had looked familiar, that Felicity had actually _wanted_ to talk to her. It was a step, at least, in the right direction. He tried not to let himself get too hopeful, but he couldn’t help the swell of elation that spread through his chest.

When he came out of the bathroom a little while later, Felicity was sitting on the bed. She turned hastily away from him, but not fast enough to hide the fact that she’d been crying.

He started forward, because every instinct in his body was screaming at him to comfort her—but then managed to stop himself. “How’d it go?” he asked tentatively. Her hair had dried wavy and it was hanging down, hiding her face from him.

She reached for a tissue on the nightstand and blew her nose. “Weird,” she said, looking down at her lap. “Hard. She’s—she’s a lot.”

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed. “She is. I don’t suppose it helped you remember anything?”

Felicity shook her head and wiped her nose again. “I don’t know. Maybe? It’s all just so much. My head feels muddled, like I can’t even tell up from down anymore.” She turned to look at him finally and her eyes widened.

He hadn’t put a shirt on yet, and he realized belatedly that she didn’t remember his scars. It was like she was seeing them for the first time.

It made him feel unexpectedly self-conscious, in a way he’d never felt around her before. The first time she’d seen his scars he’d been unconscious and trying pretty hard to die of a gunshot wound. When he’d finally come awake Felicity’s relieved face was one of the first things he saw, and it hadn’t even occurred to him to feel self-conscious. After that he’d never thought anything about it, any of the hundreds of times she’d seen them, even before they’d become a couple.

But now …

Now she was staring at him, her expression half shock and half horror, like he was some kind of oddity or something to be pitied. Something _other._ It wasn’t the first time he’d been looked at like that, but it was the first time he’d ever been looked at like that by _her._ And it hurt.

“Is that … are those from when you were shipwrecked?” she asked.

“Some of them,” he admitted, swallowing thickly. Some of them she’d stitched and bandaged with her own hands. And all of them she’d traced lovingly at one time or another, with her fingers and her mouth and her tongue. But she didn’t remember any of that anymore.

The way she was looking at him now drove it painfully home—she really did see a stranger when she looked at him.

“Sorry,” she said, looking away abruptly. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

“It’s fine, I’m just, um … I’m gonna finish getting dressed,” he said, and fled into the closet. He grabbed the first shirt he could find and dragged it on over his head.

When he came back out she was still sitting on the bed, shoulders hunched.

“Are you okay?” he asked her. “Is there anything I can do?”

She laughed bleakly. “Can you erase all of the last five months?”

“Believe me,” he said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I would if I could.”

She nodded, her fingers curling around the collar of her robe at the base of her throat.

“I think we should get you checked out by a doctor,” he said. “Just to make sure you’re okay, that there’s not …” He hesitated. “Maybe there’s something they can do to help you.”

“Okay,” she said, her expression passive and oddly slack. “Whatever you think is best.”

“Okay,” he repeatedly dully.

Christ, he hated feeling this helpless. He couldn’t stand to see her struggling, but he didn’t know how to help her. He wanted so badly to reach out to her, but everything in her body language was begging him to leave her alone.

“I’m just …” He gestured toward the door helplessly. “I’ll give you some privacy,” he said, and went downstairs.

Oliver sank down on the couch and buried his head in his hands. He didn’t know what he was going to do if things stayed like this.

What if Felicity never got her memories back? What if it was all gone forever? All those years they’d spent working together, getting to know each other. Dancing around each other. Building trust and growing closer. All the small little moments that had turned them from partners into friends into lovers. The hours spent together in the original lair at Verdant and at his old office at Queen Consolidated. Their first date. Their first kiss. The first time they’d made love. The life they’d built together.

What if she never got any of it back?

Where would that leave them? Where would it leave _him?_

✥ ✥ ✥

When Felicity came downstairs a few hours later, Oliver was sitting at the computer. He stood up, awkwardly jamming his hands into his pockets, and turned to face her.

She was wearing her own clothes, a pair of jeans and an old sweater of his that she used to wear around the house on chilly evenings after she got home from work. The sight of it on her made his throat burn. She probably didn’t even know it was his. She’d borrowed it so often he’d ceded it to her, and it lived on her side of the closet now.

“How are you feeling?” he asked neutrally.

“Fine,” she said, shrugging. “Better.”

“I had a thought that maybe looking at some more pictures might help trigger your memories.” He gestured at the laptop behind him, where he’d spent the last two hours creating a slideshow of all the photos he could find, sorted into chronological order. “You know, if you felt up to it.”

“Sure,” she said without much enthusiasm. “Yeah, okay.”

She sat down at the computer and leaned forward to look at the first photo. It was of the two of them sitting side-by-side in one of the booths at Big Belly Burger, the first picture ever taken of them together. John had taken it one night when their partnership was still in its early days and they’d had no idea where it would eventually lead them. They both looked so young, it was like staring at two completely different people.

Felicity threw a glance at him over her shoulder. “Are you just going to stand there and watch me do this?” she asked uncomfortably. “Because it’s kind of—”

“Sorry,” Oliver said, trying not to let the hurt show in his expression.

He’d thought they’d look at the photos together. That she’d ask him questions and he’d tell her stories. That reminiscing about happier times would bring them closer together and heal some of the distance between them.

But maybe that was expecting too much. He didn’t want to make her nervous or crowd her. He didn’t want to impose himself on her if she didn’t want him around.

“I’ll just go—” He didn’t know where to go. He felt like he’d been circling her uneasily all day, moving from room to room, trying to stay out of her way. “I’ll be upstairs,” he said finally.

Oliver went up to the master bedroom and stood in the doorway, feeling empty and defeated. He gazed despondently at the bed, remembering their first night in the loft together, the way Felicity’s hair had spread out across the pillow as he laid her down. He remembered a hundred different nights spent together in this bed, nights full of laughter and tears and pleasure and whispered confessions in the dark.

He stood there for a long time, letting the memories pass through him, and then he went into the closet and started pulling his clothes off the hangers. He took all of his things out of the closet and the bathroom, and he moved them down the hall into the guest room.

What Felicity clearly wanted most right now was space, so that was what he was going to give her.

He’d give her whatever she needed. No matter how much it hurt.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The next day Oliver drove Felicity to Star City General. He’d called her old neurologist first thing that morning, and as soon as Oliver had explained the situation he’d made room in his schedule for a full workup the same day.

When Felicity had been recovering from her spinal injury Oliver had always gone into the exam room with her and held her hand. But now he sat out in the waiting room, staring at a six-month-old issue of _Sports Illustrated_ while the doctor performed his tests.

In addition to a complete medical workup, they were doing a series of neuropsychologic tests, as well as an MRI and a CT scan to check for physical abnormalities. It was three hours before a nurse came and asked Oliver to follow her back to the neurologist’s office.

Felicity was sitting in one of the two chairs across from the doctor’s desk. Dr. McGovern stood up to greet Oliver. He was a soft-voiced grandfatherly man, with downy silver hair and a calmly reassuring manner.

Oliver shook his hand and then took the empty chair next to Felicity. She was twisting her hands in her lap and had only looked up at him briefly when he came in.

“Is everything okay?” Oliver asked anxiously.

“Physically, she’s just fine,” Dr. McGovern said. “It’s remarkable, really, considering the extent of the memory impairment.”

Oliver glanced over at Felicity but she didn’t react. Maybe she’d already heard all of this. “What does that mean for her prognosis?” he asked when she didn’t say anything.

The doctor took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid it’s simply impossible to say. I’ve never seen anything like this—the combination of drugs that were used to induce the amnesia, it’s … well it’s outside the realm of my experience. It’s outside the realm of current medicine, frankly. I’m not going to sugarcoat this because I think you need to prepare yourselves: there is a very real possibility that her memories may never return.”

Oliver heard Felicity exhale raggedly beside him. His hand twitched reflexively with the urge to reach out for her, and he balled it into a fist.

“I will say this, however,” Dr. McGovern continued gently. “The brain can be a miraculously resilient organ, and we just don’t know enough about long-term effects of what was done to her. The damage may, in fact, be reversible over time. I just can’t say for certain, one way or the other.”

Oliver nodded numbly. That meant it wasn’t hopeless. As long as there was a chance Felicity could get better, he was prepared to seize onto it and hang on for dear life. God knew, she’d beaten worse odds before.

Dr. McGovern put his glasses back on and reached for his tablet. “I’m going to call in a prescription for a drug used to treat dementia patients that’s been shown to have some benefit for those with cognitive impairments. It’s not a miracle cure, so I don’t want you to expect dramatic results, but it may aid the recovery of your memories.”

“Thank you,” Felicity said quietly.

Oliver cleared his throat. “I did some reading about memory loss on the internet, and it said that older memories are usually the first to return. Is that true?”

“With many patients, yes, that’s what we find,” Dr. McGovern said. “Our memories from childhood are the most deeply embedded, and therefore tend to be the hardest to shake.”

Oliver tried to keep his voice neutral. “So she’s likely to remember her mother before she remembers me.”

“Perhaps,” the doctor conceded. “But let’s just take it one day at a time and see how it goes.”

✥ ✥ ✥

Felicity didn’t say a word on the drive back to the loft. Oliver kept throwing worried glances her way, but she kept her face turned toward the side window. He wished he knew what she was thinking. He wasn’t used to her being this closed off.

When they got home she sank down on the couch and pulled her knees up to her chest. Oliver followed her and sat down across from her.

“What can I do?” he asked.

She shook her head, hugging her knees to her chest. “Nothing.”

He didn’t know what to say or how to help her. He didn’t know what she needed. And he hated feeling this helpless. There had to be something …

He pushed himself to his feet. “You must be hungry—”

“I’m not,” she said flatly.

He ran his hand over the back of his head.

She glanced up at him and her expression hardened. “Actually, you want to know what you can do? You can stop doing _that._ ”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“Looking at me like that.”

“Like—?”

“Like I just pissed on your birthday cake.”

The words sounded so harsh coming out of her mouth, he couldn’t help flinching a little. It didn’t sound like something Felicity would say. Not the Felicity he knew, anyway. “I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing,” he said tightly.

“Well you are. You’re following me around all moony-eyed all the time, and whenever I do anything it feels like I just kicked a puppy.”

He took a measured breath. “Felicity—”

“That doesn’t even feel like my name!” she snapped. “Don’t you get it? None of this feels real to me. And then there _you_ are, looking at me like I hung the moon.”

His jaw clenched. “I can’t help the way I feel.”

“No, of course not, but do you have any idea how uncomfortable it makes me? How much pressure you’re putting on me with every sad glance and beleaguered sigh. I mean, you should have seen your face when that doctor said I might never get my memories back. How disappointed you looked.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You _were.”_

He closed his eyes briefly, trying to compose his thoughts. So he didn’t screw this up. Or do any more damage than he’d already apparently done. “I’m doing the best I can,” he said carefully. “I just want to help you, but I don’t know how to do that. You’re shutting me out and I can’t tell what’s going on in your head. For all I know you don’t even want to get your memories back.”

“Maybe I don’t,” she shot back.

Oliver’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

She looked away, hugging her knees even tighter. “I keep looking around me at this life I supposedly used to have and I’m honestly not sure if it’s a life I even want.”

He swallowed thickly. “You mean you’re not sure _I’m_ what you want.”

She looked back at him, and her expression softened a little. “It’s not just you, it’s all of it. It’s living in this place that feels like a museum. It’s the clothes up in that closet—all those brightly-colored designer dresses and high-heeled shoes that don’t feel like anything I’d wear. And apparently I’m supposed to be a CEO? Which—I don’t even understand how that can possibly be me and I’m pretty sure I don’t want it to be.” She dropped her knees so she was sitting cross-legged and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling. “None of this feels like my life, but it’s who you keep wanting me to be.”

“I told you I don’t want you to be anyone but yourself.”

She shook her head, pressing her lips together until they were almost white. “But that’s not true, not really. I can see it every time you look at me. You want _her_ back. You want the person who loved you, and that’s not me. You heard what the doctor said. It might never be me.”

Oliver shook his head. “You can’t give up hope. Not yet.”

She huffed out a bitter laugh. “Why? What’s hope ever done for anyone?”

“Everything,” he said quietly. “Absolutely everything. It brought us together in the first place and it’s kept us together through unimaginable adversity. It allowed you to walk again. And it brought you back to me when I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“ _I don’t remember any of that!”_ She squeezed her eyes shut and drew in a shaky breath. “Look, it’s not like I can’t see how much this is hurting you,” she said, squeezing her hands into fists. “It’s not like I _want_ to hurt you. You seem really nice …”

The air rushed out of Oliver’s lungs like he’d been punched in the diaphragm.

_Nice._

He _seemed_ nice.

After everything they’d meant to each other, that’s all he was now. Someone who _seemed nice._ She might as well have just stabbed him in the chest and twisted the blade.

It must have shown on his face because she winced. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be.” The absolute last thing he wanted was for her to apologize to him. Because no matter what he was going through, no matter how much this was hurting him, he knew that what she was dealing with right now with was infinitely worse.

She looked away, fixing her gaze on the skyline outside the window. Her hands were still balled into fists, the knuckles white with tension. “You know how they say we’re the sum total of our experiences? Well my experiences are all gone. And I have to find a way to live with who I am, not keep dwelling on who I used to be.”

“You’re right,” he said hollowly. “I’m sorry for making you feel like I was pressuring you. I can do better. I _will_ do better. Just … tell me what you need from me because right now I honestly don’t know.”

She didn’t look at him. “I need to be alone for a while so I can think. Like, actually alone.”

He nodded. “I can do that. Is a few hours enough or—?”

“A few hours would be good.”

“Okay.” His voice felt like it was being scraped over sandpaper. “I’ll be back in a few hours, then.”

He turned and walked out of the loft.

✥ ✥ ✥

Diggle looked up, surprised, when Oliver showed up at the lair. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be spending time with Felicity.”

Oliver stalked past him wordlessly, straight into the back where the heavy bag was, and punched it as hard as he could. And then he punched it again. And again. And again.

“Hey,” Diggle said, coming up behind him. “You’re gonna break your hand, you keep up like that.”

“Good,” Oliver muttered, but he quit hitting the bag.

“You wanna talk about it?” Diggle asked.

“I really don’t,” Oliver said, scrubbing his hands over the sides of his head.

“You wanna throw me on the mat a few times?”

Oliver shook his head. “I can’t. The way I’m feeling right now, I’m not sure I can be trusted to hold back.”

“So don’t hold back.” Diggle went to the equipment cabinet and started pulling out gloves and headgear. “Nothing soothes the soul like some good old-fashioned boxing.”

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Oliver,” Diggle said, cocking a disdainful eyebrow, “I know you think you’re a scary badass and all, but the day you can take me in the boxing ring is the day I trade my in my white hat for a bowl of bran flakes and retire from the vigilante game.”

So they went a few rounds with the gloves on. Diggle had weight, height, and strength on his side, and he gave way better than he got. Oliver held back at first, but once it was clear Diggle could take anything he dished out, he really did let himself go. His punches were sloppy, fueled by emotion more than technique, but it felt cathartic to let it all out.

“See?” Diggle said when they finally called it quits an hour later. “Soothes the soul.” He dropped onto a stool and cracked a bottle of water.

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed, toweling the sweat off out of his hair.

“Now you ready to tell me why you’re not at home with Felicity?” Diggle asked, watching him.

Oliver sank down on the mat, propped his arms on his knees, and sighed heavily. “I’m giving her some space.”

“You sure that’s what she needs right now?”

“She doesn’t want me around.” Oliver laid back on the floor to release some of the tension in his lower back and draped his forearm across his forehead. “Apparently I make her uncomfortable. She doesn’t like the way I look at her.”

Diggle raised an eyebrow. “How do you look at her?”

“Like I’m in love with her—which is a feeling she doesn’t reciprocate. I believe the phrase she used was ‘kicked puppy.’”

“Oof,” Diggle said.

“She feels like I’m trying to make her into someone she’s not.”

“You gotta give it time, man.”

Oliver rubbed his eyes with the heels of hands. “The doctor said she may never get any of her memories back.”

Diggle blew out a long breath. “I’m sorry, Oliver. That’s rough.”

“She’s basically given up already. And I can’t even blame her. Why should she want to go back to being someone she can’t remember being?”

“Who says she has to? Maybe she’s right, maybe you’re trying too hard to get back what you lost instead of focusing on what you’ve got.”

“What’s that?”

“Felicity, man. You’ve got _her._ Memories or not she’s still the person you fell in love with. And you’re the person she fell in love with. Take it from the guy who watched you two dance around each other making hearteyes for two years.”

“Maybe we’re not, though. Maybe I’m not someone this version of Felicity wants anything to do with.”

“I don’t accept that. A person is more than just their memories and whatever you both saw in each other before, it’s still in there. You two fell in love once, you can do it again—trust me, I’ve got the matching marriage licenses to prove it. So maybe you have to start over from scratch. It’s not the end of the world.”

Oliver turned his head and peered at Diggle. “What are you saying, I should ask her out on a date?”

Diggle gave him a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe. All I know for sure is that you can’t give up. Not after everything you went through to get her back.”

After Diggle went home Oliver stayed at lair for another hour. Thinking.

Maybe he _should_ ask her on a date. Wipe the slate clean and start over. Like they just met. No more talking about what they used to have.

Maybe she’d open up if he showed her he wanted to know her as she was _now._ And then maybe she could start getting to know him all over again.

Would she even give him the chance? Would she say yes if he asked? Did she even _want_ to get to know him?

He thought back to the day he’d asked her out on their first date. It felt like a million years ago now. But he remembered being petrified.

Which, in retrospect, was ludicrous, because he’d known how she felt about him. He’d known for months, even though he’d tried not to let himself think about it. But somehow he’d managed to convince himself there was a chance she’d turn him down. And he’d been so invested by that point, the stakes had seemed terrifying. It had taken him weeks to work up the nerve to actually ask her.

God, he could still picture her face when he’d finally managed to get the words out. That part of it he still remembered clear as day, as if it had only happened a few minutes ago. That particular way she’d lit up for him, smiling with her whole face. It was burned into his heart. He’d carried with him through all the misery that had followed, clinging to it for dear life. That memory had gotten him through some of his darkest hours. It was one of his most precious possessions.

The thought of losing it was devastating. He couldn’t even imagine. To have someone violate your mind and strip you of the things you held most dear. The one thing no one was supposed to be able to take from you—your experiences. But that’s exactly what had been done to Felicity. She didn’t have anything to cling to to get her through this.

She needed to make new memories. Happy memories.

He could help her do that.

He could ask her out on a brand new first date and make a new memory that they could share. And okay, it was infinitely scarier this time because he genuinely didn’t know if she’d say yes. But he had to try. He had to show her that he could be the man she needed _now,_ not just the one she’d needed in another life.

He was going to do it. He was going to go home and ask Felicity on a date. He’d make her understand that he just wanted to get to know her. And he’d promise not to bring up their past or talk about the Felicity he used to know. He’d convince her to give him another chance.

Once he’d made up his mind, Oliver took a quick shower at the lair and raced home to Felicity, fired up with fresh hope and good intentions.

When let himself into the loft, all the lights where out. He made his way upstairs quietly, by feel more than sight. Felicity’s bedroom door was shut. He went over and stood outside it, listening. He could hear her snoring softly within. She was asleep already.

Fine. He’d ask her tomorrow, then.

It was probably better this way, anyway. It would give him more time to figure out the best way to approach her.

He was awake half the night, going over what he was going to say in his head. Working through different scenarios. Planning the date in his head. Trying to decide what clothes he should wear. Where he should take her.

Someplace neither of them had ever been before would probably be best. Or maybe she had a favorite restaurant in town. He didn’t know how long she’d been in Star City, but at least a few weeks. Maybe there was somewhere she wanted to show him.

He wasn’t even sure if she still liked the same foods she used to. He knew some of her tastes had changed, but not all of them. He’d ask her, tomorrow, what kind of food she liked. He’d offer to let her pick the restaurant.

They were going to get through this. Things would get better, this was just a bump in the road. They’d been through worse and come out the other side. They’d do it again.

He’d make things right with her. He didn’t blame her for the way she was feeling, but he could fix it. Everything would be better tomorrow, after they talked.

 _Everyone likes Italian,_ he thought as he finally drifted off to sleep.

✥ ✥ ✥

Felicity was up and about before him in the morning. Oliver woke to the sound of her opening and closing cabinets in the kitchen downstairs.

He jumped out of bed and brushed his teeth and tried to do something with his hair, which kept insisting on standing up funny on one side.

Then he wasted five minutes trying to decide what to wear—he didn’t want to dress up, but he didn’t want to look like a complete slob, either. Finally he settled on a pair of jeans and a blue plaid button-down she’d complimented him on once. After one last fruitless swipe at his hair, he ventured downstairs.

Felicity was sitting at the dining room table eating a bagel. She looked up at him but didn’t smile.

He opened his mouth to say good morning, but the words died on his lips when he saw the suitcase sitting on the floor next to the table.

No no _no._

For a second he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything but stand there staring at the suitcase with his mouth hanging open like a fool. Because that’s what he was. A fool.

Felicity stood up. Her hand clenched around the back of the chair hard enough to turn her knuckles white. Like she was bracing herself.

“What’s—what’s this?” he managed finally. As if he didn’t fucking know already.

“I’m going to Las Vegas,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. “To stay with my mother.”

“Why?” He could barely get the word out. He felt like his throat was closing up, like he was going into anaphylactic shock.

“I think it’s for the best, under the circumstances. I think it will be better this way.”

“Felicity, please, you don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do.” Her jaw was set. He knew that look. It meant she’d made up her mind.

She’d made the decision yesterday, he realized.

While he was talking to Dig and trying to figure out how to fix things, she was making plans to leave him. He’d been turning over date scenarios in his head last night when she’d already packed and bought her plane ticket.

“Please don’t do this,” he said desperately. “Please just give me a chance.”

“Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

He wasn’t going to be able to make her stay. Anything he tried to do to keep her here would only make her want to leave more.

He swallowed. “How long?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’ll be any better than here. But I have to find out.”

He nodded woodenly. “Do you want me to drive you to the airport?”

“I’ve already called a car. It’ll be here any minute.”

“Right.” Maybe this was all a dream. Maybe he was still lying in bed and any minute he’d wake up and this wouldn’t have happened. Felicity wouldn’t be leaving him. Again.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He shook his head. “Don’t—don’t do that. Don’t be sorry. You have to do whatever you think is best for you. That’s all I want. I hope you know that.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded.

“Can I—will you do one thing for me? You don’t owe me anything, but could I just ask you for one favor anyway?”

“What?” she asked warily.

“Whatever you decide to do, even if your decision is that you don’t want me in your life anymore, will you at least keep in touch? Just so I know that you’re okay? Just … don’t disappear on me. Because I don’t think I could survive that a second time.”

She bit her lip. Nodded. “I promise.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. His eyes were burning but he didn’t want to cry in front of her. She’d asked him not to make this any harder.

Her phone vibrated on the table and she reached for it. “My car’s downstairs.”

This was it. She was leaving.

After months of searching he’d finally found her, but he couldn’t hold onto her. She wasn’t his to hold onto anymore.

She reached for the handle of her suitcase and wheeled it past him. And then she was walking through the door and closing it behind her. He could hear the luggage wheels squeaking all the way down the hall outside, and the soft ding of the elevator when it arrived to carry her away.

She hadn’t even said goodbye.

 


	9. Chapter 9

After Felicity was gone, Oliver carried the remains of her bagel into the kitchen and dumped it into the trash. Then he sank down onto the floor, hugged his knees to his chest, and cried.

Five minutes later, when he was finally able to catch again, he fished his phone out of his pocket and called Felicity’s mother. She answered on the first ring. “Oliver?”

“Donna,” he choked out. “She left.”

“I know, hon, and I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s gonna be okay.”

Oliver pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut. “Is it? I’m not sure anymore.”

“Don’t think like that. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but this is actually a good sign.”

“How?”

“Because she was lost and upset and what did she do? She didn’t turn in on herself or run away. She called her mother. That’s what her instinct told her to do. That means my baby’s still in there.”

Oliver was glad that Donna still had a piece of Felicity’s heart to hold onto, but it was hard to take comfort from that when he didn’t happen to be so lucky. He tried to take a deep breath but his lungs felt like they were packed with cement.

Donna made a sympathetic noise. “She’s going to come back to us, Oliver. Both of us. You have to believe that.”

“Yeah,” he said unconvincingly. “Sure.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay, hon? And let you know how she’s doing.”

“Okay,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Thanks. Just … just take care of her, I guess.”

He ended the call and set his phone down on the floor next to him. He thought about getting up, but he honestly couldn’t see the point.

Some distant part of his brain recognized that that was dangerous thinking. He should get up and make himself take a walk. Get out of the house for a while. Some fresh air and exercise would do him good.

He could walk to the grocery store, pick up some things to make lunch. On the way back he could even stop off at the liquor store.

That was _really_ dangerous thinking.

He picked up his phone and called Thea.

“Hey, big brother,” she answered cheerfully. “How’s the reunion going?”

“She’s gone, Thea. She left me and went to stay with her mother.”

He heard Thea’s sharp intake of breath. “Are you at home?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Oliver was still sitting on the kitchen floor ten minutes later when Thea let herself into the apartment.

She dropped her purse on the counter and sank down cross-legged onto the floor across from him. “Tell me what happened.”

He told her everything.

When he was done, she blew out a long breath and said, “That really sucks.”

“I know I should just be glad she’s alive …” Oliver started.

“Bullshit,” Thea said, eyes blazing. “You’re allowed to be sad that the woman you love doesn’t love you back. You get be pissed about it, even.”

Oliver shook his head. “It’s not her fault.”

“Of course it’s not her fault. It’s not your fault, either. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be mad as hell that it happened to both of you.”

“What do I do now?” he asked. Because he genuinely had no idea.

Thea pursed her lips and twisted them to the side. “You’re not gonna like it.”

“What?”

“Leave her alone.”

“You’re right,” Oliver said. “I hate it.”

“Look, Felicity’s whole world has been turned upside down. Twice. She’s scared and in a hundred kinds of pain right now, and as much you want to be the one to help her, maybe this time you can’t be.”

“I don’t accept that.”

“Too bad,” Thea said sharply. “She’s got enough to deal with right now just coming to terms with everything that’s happened to her. It’s not fair to expect her to deal with your feelings, too.”

Oliver closed his eyes. This wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He wanted her to tell him to jump on a plane and follow Felicity out to Vegas. To present himself at Donna’s door and win her back.

Thea’s foot bumped up against his. “I know you did your best for her, Ollie, but if having you and all of your feelings around all the time is making this harder for her, then you need to let her go.”

“I can’t,” he whispered.

“I’m not saying forever. I’m saying for a few days, a few weeks, maybe even a few months. However long she needs to get her head screwed on right. Give her some time to heal. Let Donna take care of her for a while. Then, when Felicity’s ready, you can try again.”

He let a ragged breath. What she was saying made sense. He could recognize that rationally. But that didn’t mean he could live with it. What if she was never ready? What if she went off to Vegas and realized she didn’t need him in her life?

“It’s gonna work out,” Thea said gently. “Just … maybe not as fast as you wanted it to.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “You really think so?”

“Yeah. I mean, that whole dating plan sounded like a good one. I just think maybe it’s a little too much too soon. She’s not ready yet. But she will be.”

“What if she never comes back?” His chest clenched just saying the words.

“Then you’ll go out to Vegas and try talking to her again. For now, though, you need to show her that you’re willing to give her the space she wants. You’ve got Donna on your side, don’t forget. Give it some time, see how things go, and when Felicity’s ready, you guys will talk and things will be better. You’ll see.” She nudged his foot with her shoe again and he gave her a half-hearted smile. “Now come on,” she said, getting to her feet. “My ass is going numb, it’s time to stop sitting on the floor like a loser.” She held out her hand to him.

He took it, and let her lever him off the floor. “Thanks,” he muttered.

“C’mere.” Thea wrapped her arms around his torso and hugged him hard enough to make his ribs hurt.

Oliver propped his chin on the top of her head and squeezed her back for dear life.

Thea stayed with him the rest of the day. They watched movies and popped popcorn and ordered Chinese food, just like they used to do when he was a teenager and she was a little kid and their parents would go out for the night and leave them alone.

Oliver feel asleep in the middle of the third _Lord of the Rings_ movie and woke up sometime around midnight. There was a blanket draped over him and Thea was curled up on the other couch, snoring.

He rolled over and went back to sleep.

✥ ✥ ✥

Life went on. Somehow.

Oliver went back to going through the motions. Training and maintaining his gear during the day, going out on the streets with Thea at night. Trying to wring a few hours of sleep out of the early morning hours.

He kept thinking it should be easier now, because at least now he knew where Felicity was, and that she was okay, for a certain value of okay.

But it didn’t feel easier. It felt like he’d fucked up, except this time he didn’t know what he could have done any differently, much less how to make it any better.

At least the nightmares had let up a little. Mostly.

Donna called him every few days to keep him updated.

“She’s doing better today, I think. We went out to dinner and then to the movies. She wanted to see the new _Star Wars._ Remember how much she loved the old ones?”

“Yeah, I do,” Oliver said, chest tightening. She’d dragged him to a midnight screening of _The Force Awakens_ two years ago. He really hated a lot that she’d gone to see the new one without him.

“We watched them on TV the other day. I think maybe some of it felt familiar to her.”

Great. So she could remember _Star Wars_ but not him. That didn’t hurt at all.

“It’s hard to tell, though,” Donna went on. “She still doesn’t say much, and I’m trying not to be too nosey. Which, for me, is a real stretch, as you know.” She laughed nervously. She was trying so hard to make him feel better, he felt guilty that it wasn’t working.

Oliver swallowed. “Will you tell her … just tell her I’m here if she decides she wants to talk. She can call anytime, day or night.”

“Sure, hon. I’ll tell her.”

Felicity didn’t call.

✥ ✥ ✥

A week passed. Two weeks. A month.

Enough time that Oliver stopped diving for his phone whenever it rang. Stopped listening for footsteps in the hall outside the front door. Stopping hoping, for the most part.

And then one day, Felicity came back. Just like that.

When Oliver got home from the grocery store one afternoon there was a purse sitting on the counter, just where Felicity always used to leave hers.

He froze, all the air leaving his lungs in a rush, and let the grocery bags fall to the floor at his feet. “Felicity?” he called out uncertainly.

“Up here,” she said, coming down the stairs.

He watched her walk toward him, not quite believing that she was really there. But she was. She was real. “You came back,” he said, bewildered.

She stopped in front of him, her eyes roving over his face. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“I wasn’t sure, to be honest.” He shifted uncomfortably, and tried to swallow down the nervous jitters in his stomach. “How was—how was your visit with your mother?”

“Exhausting. But good.” The corner of her mouth twitched into something very close to a smile. “I’m glad I went.”

She seemed different. Her posture was less taut—less defensive—than it had been before she left. And there wasn’t as much strain in the lines of her face. Her voice sounded softer, too. More like her old self.

“I owe you an apology,” Oliver blurted out, because this was probably as right of a time as he was ever going to get.

Felicity shook her head, her brow creasing. “You really don’t.”

“I wanted to tell you before you left,” he said, talking fast to get the words out before she could stop him, “that I’m sorry for making you feel like you weren’t who I wanted you to be. Because you’re perfect exactly the way you are. And it’s okay if you don’t want to be the person you used to be. It doesn’t matter, because whoever you are, that’s somebody I want to get to know.”

She blinked at him, her eyes wide and shining and her lips slightly parted, but he barreled on, because he needed to get all of this out. He’d held it in for too long, and he wasn’t going to let another opportunity slip away from him. “So I thought—I hoped maybe, if you’d give me another chance, we could try to get to know each other all over again. Start from scratch, like we just met.” He stopped, finally, and waited, holding his breath.

Felicity tilted her head, smiled a small smile, and said, “Leather and Lace.”

Oliver’s throat constricted. His mouth opened, but no sounds came out.

“Is that our song?” she asked him. “Because it came on the radio when I was in the car with my mother and I had this, like, intense visceral reaction. I actually started crying, which was really embarrassing, but suddenly I was just overwhelmed by this crazy strong sense memory of slow-dancing to that song with you at bar that smelled like stale beer and sawdust.”

“Blue Gene’s,” Oliver whispered. It was in Northern California. They’d stopped off there not long after they left Starling together two years ago.

The song had come on the jukebox and Felicity dragged him onto the empty dance floor over his protests. _But this is so totally our song!_ she’d insisted. _What could be more perfect for us?_

It was the first time they’d ever danced together. He held her in his arms as they swayed along with the music, feeling like the luckiest man on earth. She’d murmured the lyrics into his chest on the dance floor, and into his bare skin again later that night in their hotel room.

“Felicity …” he said, his voice cracking a little. “Did you get your memory back?”

She shook her head. “Not all of it. Not even most of it. Just … bits and pieces. Flashes here and there.”

But they were flashes that included him. It was coming back to her. _He_ was coming back to her.

“I don’t even know how to make sense of some of it,” she said. “You know how sometimes you wake up from a dream, and for a second you can’t remember what was the dream and what’s real?”

Oliver nodded, because he knew that feeling all too well.

“It’s like that, only all the time. Like … I think I remember stepping on … I swear it was a land mine, as crazy as that sounds. And you swinging down out of a tree like Tarzan or something?”

Oliver couldn’t help laughing. The land mine. Of course she’d remember that goddamn land mine.

“Is that true?” she asked. “Did that, like, actually happen?”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “That happened.”

Her smile widened to match his. “I don’t remember where we were or why we were there, but I remember falling to the ground after the explosion, and you landing on top of me, shielding my body with yours, and I remember that I felt …” She trailed off, biting her lower lip.

“What?” he prompted, heart in his throat.

“Safe.”

_Safe._ He’d take that. Happily.

“I still don’t remember very much about our life together,” she said, forehead creasing. “But I remember that you were important to me. I remember that I was happy around you. And I’d like to try to get that back.” She hesitated. “Assuming you still do, I mean.”

He did. Oh, god, he wanted that _so much._ “I’d like that, too,” he managed unevenly.

“Yeah?”

He nodded. Took a deep breath. “Felicity, would you—would you like to maybe go out on a date with me?”

Her whole face lit up in a smile. “Yes,” she said, nodding. “I’d like that a lot.”

And there it was. That was the look. It was exactly how she’d looked the _first_ time he’d asked her on a first date.

Oliver exhaled, his shoulders sagging with relief. “Dinner?” he said hopefully. “Tonight? Or is that too soon? We can wait if—”

“Tonight’s good,” she said, nodding some more.

“Okay.” He was grinning from ear to ear. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled like this; he could feel muscles coming to life that he’d forgotten he had. “Dinner tonight, then. It’s a date.”

A date. They were going on a date. Tonight.

✥ ✥ ✥

Felicity didn’t like Italian food anymore, as it turned out. At least, not what passed for it in Star City, anyway. She’d been spoiled by the Northern Italian cuisine in Switzerland, she said, and everything in America tasted like Chef Boyardee.

She said she liked seafood, though, and Star City had great seafood. So they were going for seafood. To a brand new place that had just opened on the waterfront three months ago. A place that neither of them had ever been to.

A clean slate. A fresh start.

Their reservation was in half an hour, and Oliver was struggling with the Windsor knot on his tie. His hands were sweaty and clumsy, like a hormonal teenager getting ready for prom night. Except he’d never been this nervous when he was a teenager. He’d never cared about anything this much when he was teenager.

He frowned at his reflection in the mirror and yanked the tie undone. It was too much. Too formal. Too uptight.

Tossing the tie aside, he adjusted the collar of his shirt. It was blue, because Felicity had told him once that she liked him best in blue. He was wearing her favorite suit, too. The same gray charcoal he’d worn to their engagement party.

When he was as ready as he could make himself he stepped out into the hall. He’d never bothered to move out of the guest room while she was gone. On some level he must have still been clinging to the hope that she would come back—and now here she was. Here _they_ were.

The master bedroom door was still closed, so he went downstairs to wait. He tried sitting down but he was too anxious to sit still, so he wound up pacing back and forth across the room.

And then he heard her footsteps on the stairs, and he turned around and there she was. For a second he almost forgot to breathe.

Because she was wearing green.

He didn’t know if it was on purpose or not, but _Christ,_ he loved her in green.

He recognized the dress. It wasn’t one she’d worn often, but he’d always appreciated it on her. She’d straightened her hair, and she was wearing contacts and high-heeled shoes and bright pink lipstick.

“You look beautiful,” he said as she walked toward him.

Her cheeks flushed and her eyes skated shyly away. “So do you,” she said. “I mean not beautiful. Handsome. Not that you’re not beautiful—it’s just, men probably don’t like to be called beautiful, I guess. You look handsome.”

A warm, familiar feeling settled in his chest. “Are you ready to go?” he asked, smiling. She nodded and he held the door for her. “After you.”

✥ ✥ ✥

The hostess seated them at a table by the window, overlooking the bay. The view was spectacular: swaths of vibrant orange and pink painted across the sky, and dancing on the surface of the water.

Felicity ordered a glass of chardonnay; Oliver stuck with water.

He stared at the menu, but it was difficult to focus on the words with Felicity sitting across from him. His foot was bouncing under the table. He crossed his ankles, tried to sit still.

“Are you as nervous as I am?” she asked, peering at him over the top of her menu.

“Probably more,” he admitted.

“I don’t exactly know how to do this. I can’t remember going on any dates.”

“There’s nothing to it,” he told her. “It’s just talking and eating. You know how to both of those things.”

She nodded. Set her menu aside. “Is this what our first date was like?”

He shook his head, frowning slightly. “I promised myself I wouldn’t talk about what things used to be like. I want to show you that I care about the present. And the future.”

“But I want to know about the past,” she said. “About what our life was like together. I’m ready to hear about it.”

Oliver opened his mouth, unsure what he wanted to say, then snapped it shut again when he saw the waiter coming with Felicity’s wine. He rubbed his palms on his thighs under the table.

“Are you ready to order?” the waiter asked.

Felicity ordered the diver scallops, Oliver the cedar plank salmon. The waiter collected their menus and disappeared again.

“See, I’ve been trying to piece it all together,” Felicity said when they were alone again. “My life, I mean. But there’s not a lot to go on, because—” Something dark flashed across her face. “Well, you know why,” she said, reaching for her wine. “My mom still had some of my old diaries from when I was a kid, but …” Her mouth twisted in embarrassment. “Let’s just say a twelve-year-old’s diary isn’t particularly enlightening.”

Oliver smiled. He’d pay cold, hard cash—a lot of it—to read those childhood diaries of hers.

“I found a lot on the internet about you, though,” she said, and his smile faded a little. “And about the Green Arrow. That’s quite a life you’ve had.”

He gazed back at her, defenseless and exposed, and said nothing. Getting to know him again meant getting to know his flaws and mistakes again. Meant deciding for herself whether his sins were forgivable. There was no getting around that.

“To be honest, I don’t really understand how I fit into all of it,” she said. “I was hoping you could fill in the gaps.”

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he said, swallowing. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Start with something happy. Our first date.”

He winced. “Our first date wasn’t exactly—it started out amazing—the first ten minutes were probably the happiest of my life to that point—but it didn’t end well.”

“Why not?” she asked. “What happened?”

“There was kind of a—um—an explosion. Someone fired a rocket launcher at the restaurant.”

She huffed out a laugh. “First a land mine, then a rocket launcher. We sure weren’t boring, were we?”

“No,” he said, smiling. “Our lives have always been … complicated.”

“What about our second date, then?”

“There wasn’t a second date,” he said, shifting in his chair. “I got scared after the explosion, so I pushed you away. For a long time.” He shook his head, still ashamed of what a coward he’d been. How much time they’d lost. How badly he’d hurt her in the name of protecting her. “I was a fool.”

She tilted her head in sympathy. “There must have been _some_ happy times, though, right?”

“There were a lot of happy times,” he said, sitting up straighter. “A lot of them took place in between people taking shots at us, maybe, but there were definitely happy times.”

“Tell me about them,” she said. “I want to hear everything.”

The corner of his mouth curled. “How much time do you have?”

Her eyes smiled back at him. “The rest of my life.”

He started with Bali.

✥ ✥ ✥

After the waiter had cleared away their entrees, they lingered over slices of dense chocolate cake for dessert. And when that was gone, they lingered over coffee. Only when the restaurant had mostly emptied out did Oliver pay the check.

It took him half the walk back to the car to work up the courage to reach for Felicity’s hand. She gave him a soft, sideways smile and let him hold it the rest of the way to his BMW.

They were both quiet on the drive home. They’d been talking for hours, and the comfortable, companionable silence that settled over them felt like a warm blanket. Felicity played with the radio until she found a station playing old jazz standards, and Oliver leaned back, resting his hand on top of the steering wheel, and smiled as the city lights streamed past the windows.

It wasn’t until they got home that it got awkward. He was trying to do this right, the traditional way. But tradition didn’t have contingencies for when you were sleeping in the same house, at opposite ends of the hall.

While Felicity was setting her purse on the counter, Oliver lingered near the bottom of the stairs, unsure where to go or what to do next. Would they stay up and talk some more? Did she want to go to sleep? Would he be allowed to kiss her or was it too soon?

It was too soon, right? They’d only just started talking again and he didn’t want to ruin all that by moving too fast.

She walked over to him and laid a hand on his arm, using him for balance while she slipped out of her shoes. “Oh my god,” she sighed, wriggling her toes as she freed them from their high-fashion confines. “Why do I own so many of these shoes? _How_ did I ever stand them?”

“I think you liked the way they made you taller,” he offered. Her hand was still on his arm, and there was something intimate about the way she was leaning on him like a piece of furniture. Casually. Like she was completely comfortable around him. The way she used to be.

She stooped to deposit her shoes on the bottom step and then straightened, taking her hand off his arm. Oliver missed the warmth of it immediately.

“I had a really nice time tonight,” she said, looking up at him. Most of her lipstick had worn off and her eyes were wide and bright, and he loved her, oh god, how he loved her.

“Me too,” he said a little hoarsely, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He was having a hard time acting like he didn’t want to kiss her.

And apparently he was failing at it spectacularly, because she gazed up at him steadily and said, “If you wanted to kiss me, I’d be okay with that.”

He wanted. He wanted _so much._

But he was trying not to fuck this up, so instead of kissing her he said, “Are you sure? Because I don’t want you to feel pressured. I can wait.”

“I don’t want to wait,” she said, her gaze never wavering. “I want to know what it feels like to kiss you.”

And that was as close to an engraved invitation as he was going to get, so he stepped into her and took her face in his hands—tenderly, as though he were holding something cherished and priceless. Which he was, because it was _Felicity_.

A jolt of pleasure shot through him when their lips met. A feeling of perfect completion, like fitting the last piece into a jigsaw puzzle. He’d been fragmented for so long, but now, finally, he had his missing piece back and it was _everything._ She tasted like coffee and chocolate and summertime, but more than that she tasted like coming home at the end of a long day.

Her lips softened and parted against his, and it took everything he had to hold back, because he wanted all of her. He wanted teeth clashing and tongues sliding together and his hands roaming all over her body.

But he pulled away after only a few too-brief seconds, resting his forehead against hers so they were breathing the same air. “How does it feel?” he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

“Right,” she murmured. “True.” Her hands curled around his lapels and she tilted her chin up, levering herself toward him again.

He didn’t hold himself back as much the second time. His hands slid into her hair and when her mouth opened to his he took full advantage. He couldn’t help the moan that rumbled up from his chest, but she didn’t seem to mind. Quite the opposite, in fact. She rose up on her tiptoes like she was angling for more, and her hands scrabbled at him until they found better purchase his shoulders.

She was too much shorter than him, though, and he couldn’t get as close to her as he needed to be, so he dropped his hands to her hips and lifted her up off the floor. Her legs wrapped around him like they were made to be there and she wriggled against his body, jockeying for a better position—which was almost more than he could handle.

His knees wobbled, not from the weight of her, which was slight, but because he still couldn’t quite believe this was actually happening, and he felt lightheaded and vaguely stunned. So he stumbled his way over to the nearest couch—a feat of impressive coordination since she was still kissing him. Or he was kissing her. They were kissing each other, and neither of them seemed to want to stop so he could see where he was going.

Somehow he made it across the loft with no mishaps, and he sank down onto the couch with her in his lap, straddling his thighs. His hands spread out over her back as her fingers curled into his hair, tilting his head back for a better angle.

She kissed him like his lips were the answer to all her questions, and he kissed her back like she was water and he’d been wandering in the desert for years. Their hands were everywhere—they couldn’t get enough of each other—their breaths hot and short and full of longing.

It was heaven. It was St. Peter and the pearly gates and a chorus of angels singing alleluia.

Until suddenly it wasn’t.

Oliver felt the shift immediately—her sharp inhale of breath, the stiffening of her limbs, the clench of her jaw—and he let go of her, pulling his head back to look at her. “Felicity?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, scrunching up her face and pressing her fist against her forehead.

“No, _I’m_ sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

She shook her head. “You were fine. You were great, actually. It’s me. I’m not—I think I just need to take it slower.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “We can go as slow as you want.”

She nodded, and took an unsteady breath.

His brow furrowed. “Are you okay? What can I do?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head again. “Nothing, I just—” Her eyes opened, and she gazed at him uncertainly. “Will you just hold me?”

He nodded, pulling her into his chest. She buried her face in his neck and sagged against him. His arms tightened around her protectively, and he closed his eyes, content just to hold her like this for the rest of their lives.

“I can see why I liked you,” she whispered.

His chest hitched—he couldn’t help it—and he pressed his face into her hair, holding her even tighter.

She let him hold her for a while longer before she finally pushed herself upright. “It’s been a long day,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I should probably—I’m gonna go to bed.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

She gazed at him for a long moment, like she was drinking him in. Then she leaned down and kissed him, on the cheek this time. “Goodnight,” she murmured, before climbing out of his lap.

Oliver watched her scoop up her shoes and climb slowly up the stairs, her high heels dangling from her fingertips.

When she was out of sight he sank back into the couch and let his eyes fall shut.

It might not be what they used to have, but it was something.

It was _something._

And he was going to hold onto it with every ounce of strength in his body.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I want to thank everyone who's been reading along with this story! Your response has been overwhelming, and I appreciate you all so, so much! 
> 
> Second of all, I've removed the "Gen" designation from this story. Even though I originally set out intending to write more of a plotty, gen story, it's obviously taken a turn for the angsty and romantic. And it's going to keep heading that direction as we near the end. I apologize if anyone feels misled by the original classification. 
> 
> Speaking of nearing the end, we're getting close! After this chapter there's only one more full length chapter plus a short epilogue, and that's it, folks! It's been a wild ride, and I hope you're satisfied with where it eventually ends up.
> 
> I'm also going ahead and upping the rating from Teen to Explicit, even though things aren't going to heat up until the next chapter. You'll have to wait another week for the smut, but smut is coming, so I wanted to give fair warning.

Felicity slept in the next morning. When she finally came downstairs a little after ten, Oliver was sitting at the dining table with a cup of coffee, texting with Thea and Diggle.

“Morning,” she said, hesitating at the foot of the stairs. She was barefoot, wearing her old pajamas with the panda bears on them

“Hey,” he said, setting his phone aside. “There’s coffee in the carafe on the counter.”

“Thanks.” She fixed herself a cup and brought it over to the table, sliding in across from him.

It was impossible for Oliver not to notice how her eyes avoided his, settling instead on the coffee cup cradled in her hands. How she hunched her shoulders, folding in on herself in front of him. She was definitely more guarded this morning—not distant like before she went to stay with her mother, but not as open as she’d been at dinner last night, either. And it was his fault.

He shouldn’t have let things go so far last night. What had Thea said before? _Too much, too soon._ He’d let himself get swept up in the moment, and it had been a mistake.

It wasn’t one he planned on making again.

Even though Felicity seemed to be doing a lot better, she clearly wasn’t fine, and he needed to remember that. Not only was she still struggling with the loss of all her memories, but there was the emotional trauma of what Noah had done to her to consider. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could recover from overnight, or even in the space of a few weeks. It might be months, or even years, before she was able to fully trust anyone again.

Oliver was willing to wait, for as long as it took. He was ready to put in the work to earn her trust. To show her that he was worthy of it.

“Did you sleep okay?” he asked carefully.

“Great,” she said, still not meeting his eye. “That bed is really something else. It’s like sleeping on a cloud. Definitely an improvement over my mother’s sleeper sofa.”

Oliver remembered Donna’s sleeper sofa all too well. He’d slept in actual, honest-to-god dungeons more comfortable than that sleeper sofa. It was quite possible that sleeper sofa had played a role in driving Felicity back to him, and if that was the case, he was eternally grateful to Donna’s shitty sleeper sofa.

“Felicity—” he started, because there was something he needed to say.

“Don’t,” she said, frowning into her coffee.

He blinked. “What?”

“You’re going to try to apologize for last night and I don’t want you to.”

Oliver bit back the urge to apologize for apologizing. “I just think we should talk about it.”

“I’d really rather not,” she said, wincing. “It’s embarrassing.”

“I don’t want you to feel embarrassed.”

“But I am,” she said, pulling her feet up onto the chair so she was sitting cross-legged. She shook her head, tucking her hair behind her ear. “This would be a lot easier if you weren’t so good looking.”

His mouth opened. “Sorry?” he said uncertainly.

Annoyance flashed across her face. “There you go, apologizing again.”

“Help me out here,” he begged. “I’m trying.”

She looked up up at him finally, her expression softening a little. “I know you are. And I appreciate it, I really do. But you can’t understand what this is like for me.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he told her. “But I want to.”

She looked down at her lap, sighing. “I feel like a stranger in my own body—like a stranger in my own life. And just when I start to get a little bit comfortable, like maybe I almost feel like I actually belong somewhere, it’ll hit me all over again, how unfamiliar everything around me is. How little I actually know about myself and the people who are supposed to be important to me.”

“But it’s getting better,” he said. “Your memories _are_ coming back.”

“They are,” she agreed. “But not fast enough. It’s like … it’s like using a pair of tweezers to try and pick myself up piece by piece and put myself back together. And it’s so hard, and so tedious, and I’m just so tired of feeling like this all the time. I just want all of this to be over. I want to be normal, you know?”

He did know, because it was exactly how he’d felt after he came back from the island. “You’ll get there,” he said gently. “Maybe you can’t see it, because you’re still in the middle of the forest, but you’ve made so much progress. The difference between a month ago and now … it’s like night and day.”

Felicity nodded, not wholly convinced. “Last night when I kissed you, it felt good— _really_ good,” she added, flushing a little. “But then I got scared because I couldn’t tell if it was because I _remembered_ wanting you, or because I was trying to _make_ myself want you.” She looked up at him. “Does that make any sense at all?”

“It does,” he said. “It makes perfect sense. I think maybe we tried to move too fast, and we need to slow things down even more. I shouldn’t have—” He grimaced. “I’m just sorry it happened.”

“You really don’t have to keep saying you’re sorry. I was the one—” She stopped and shook her head. “If anything, I’m the one who should be apologizing for last night.”

“But I _am_ sorry,” he said. “For everything that’s happened to you. That you’re having to go through all of this. That it’s so hard. That I’m not better at understanding what you need from me.”

She nodded. “Maybe we could just take it as a given that we’re both sorry about a lot of things, and then neither of us has to say it anymore.”

He gave her a smile. “It’s a deal.”

Felicity nodded again, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

Oliver decided it was time for a subject change. “Are you hungry?” he asked, pushing back his chair. “I was thinking about making some breakfast.”

She perked up a little. “Starving, actually.”

“Any special requests?”

“Chocolate chip pancakes?” she asked hopefully over the rim of her coffee mug.

He grinned, ever a sucker for those big blue eyes of hers. “Coming right up.”

She wasn’t lying about being hungry—Oliver watched, amused, as Felicity dug into a stack of pancakes big enough to satisfy an NFL linebacker.

“Oh my god,” she moaned around a mouthful of pancake. “This? Is the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.” And then her face froze as she realized what she’d said, and her cheeks flooded with color. She lowered her eyes, hastily gulping down the food in her mouth. “I mean, I can see why they’re my favorite—breakfast food, that is—my favorite breakfast food.”

Oliver managed not to smirk. Barely.

After breakfast Felicity helped him clear the table and clean up. He washed and she dried, and then he pointed out where things went and she put them away.

Every time she brushed past him or their hands happened to touch passing a plate back and forth, Oliver’s heart rate spiked like he’d gotten an electric shock. But he took extra pains not to let it show. Even keeled, that’s what he was going to be around Felicity from now on. Calm, cool, and collected. Here for whatever she needed from him, and not here to put any kind of pressure on her.

After they’d finished cleaning up the kitchen, Felicity went upstairs to take a shower and he stretched out on the couch to watch a football game he’d saved on the DVR. He’d already canceled his plans to work on upgrades to the lair with Dig and Thea—plans they’d both been more than happy to cancel, even before he told them the reason why.

Oliver didn’t really give a shit about the game he was watching—he already knew the Comets’ defense had collapsed in the fourth quarter, leading to a 23-20 loss to the Coast City Sharks—but he figured watching football was something low-key he could do around the house so Felicity wouldn’t feel like he was hovering around her.

When she came back downstairs a half an hour later, dressed in a sweatshirt and yoga pants, she asked if she could use the computer. Oliver told her to help herself, and resisted the urge to ask what she was doing.

He tried to focus on the game, but it was pretty much impossible, with Felicity so close and yet so far away. It was like they’d turned the clock back to those first couple years of their partnership, when he’d spent all his time trying to pretend like he wasn’t madly, desperately in love with her. All those hours working together, in that shitty lair under the nightclub, when all he could think about was Felicity, sitting at her computer, only a few feet away.

So yeah, fuck the game, Oliver didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on in the game even though his eyes were glued to the TV.

“Can I ask you something?” Felicity said after a while.

“Sure,” he said, trying to act nonchalant but secretly relieved for the interruption.

“Who’s this?” she asked, turning the laptop around.

He got up and went over for a closer look. She’d been going through the photos from their engagement party last year, apparently. “That’s Curtis,” he said, pointing. “And that’s his husband Paul. Curtis worked under you at Queen Inc., and Paul was your physical therapist.”

“Are they important to me? Like close friends?”

“Yeah. Do they look familiar?”

She made a frustrated face. “Maybe Curtis does? I can’t tell if I actually remember him, or if he just reminds me of someone I’ve seen on TV. That’s what’s so hard. I can’t even tell when it’s a real memory half the time. My own brain is an unreliable narrator.”

“You and Curtis were close,” Oliver said gently. “He developed the technology that helped you walk again. He helped me search for you after you disappeared, and he’s the one who tracked you down when we found out you were alive and in Star City.”

Felicity sighed. “I hate that I can’t remember him.”

“You will.”

“Do you think …” She bit her lip. “Would you mind sitting next to me while I go through these, and explain who everyone is?”

Oliver tried not to smile too wide. “I’d be happy to.”

✥ ✥ ✥

Over the next few days, Oliver watched Felicity throw herself into learning everything she could about her past with a steely determination. Her lost memories were a mystery in need of solving, and she pursued the answers like she was cramming for a final exam, spending hours on the computer every day staring at photos and digging around on the internet, trying to unearth information about herself that her father had missed.

The two of them fell into a sort of domestic routine around the loft, sharing their communal living space like roommates. Respecting boundaries, circling each other cautiously. Not _un_ comfortable around each other, but not entirely comfortable, either.

They planned meals together and went to the grocery store together. Oliver cooked and Felicity cleaned up afterwards. They shared chores like vacuuming and taking out the trash, but they each did their own laundry.

They didn’t touch, and they didn’t kiss. But they talked. They talked a lot, sometimes for hours at a time, slowly working their way through the entire history of their relationship.

A lot of it was easy to talk about, but some of it was painful to revisit, and left Oliver feeling drained and vulnerable. He tried not to shy away from anything, though, no matter how hard it was. He was determined to be open with her this time around, about everything.

And then there’d be periods where they hardly spoke at all. They’d sit at opposite ends of the couch and Felicity would get engrossed in something on the computer or her tablet and seem to forget Oliver was there at all.

He decided to take it as a good sign. If she could be around him without being hyperaware of his presence all the time, it had to mean she was getting more comfortable with him. It was progress.

They watched a lot of movies. Felicity wanted to watch all the movies that had been her favorites before. It was something she’d done with her mom, a low-stakes way to spend time together without having to talk very much. If it was a movie Felicity had seen a lot, sometimes it would feel familiar to her, maybe even trigger old memories. So they watched a lot of movies, often two or three a day.

And at the end of every night, they’d bid each other goodnight and retire to their separate rooms.

Which was fine. It was good. Oliver was just happy to have her back. To be getting a second chance.

It was kind of nice, actually, to take things slowly, in a way they hadn’t been able to before. Their relationship had sort of gone from zero to eleven the first time around, and they hadn’t had time to linger over any of the steps in between.

But now … now they were getting a do over. They had all the time in the world, and Oliver was going to make the most of it, savoring every second they spent together.

So he stayed on his very best behavior. Even though he thought about touching her pretty much all the time. Not sexually—well, okay, _yes_ sexually, but not that primarily. Mostly he just wanted to keep a hand resting on her at all times to reassure himself that she was still here.

But he didn’t. He kept his distance, respected her personal space. They’d agreed to take it slow, so fine. No touching. He could live with that, if it meant he got to have her in his life again. Happily.

✥ ✥ ✥

At the end of Felicity’s first full week back at home, Oliver made her favorite curry for dinner and they sat down to start watching _Firefly._

She’d wanted to watch _Serenity,_ but he wouldn’t let her until she’d seen the television show first. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t want him to let her watch them out of order. He was pretty sure he’d get in big trouble for it, actually.

Three-quarters of the way through the first episode, his phone buzzed in his pocket. “Shit,” he muttered, frowning at the screen. It was a text message from Dig.

“What’s wrong?” Felicity asked, pausing the TV.

“Nothing, it just—it’s this gunrunner we’ve been trying to track down.” After months of operating in the shadows he’d popped back up in the open. Tonight. “Dig’s finally got a location on him.”

Oliver hadn’t put on the Arrow suit since Felicity had come back from her mother’s, and Diggle and Thea had supported him in that choice. But this was much bigger than ordinary patrolling. This was a guy they’d been tracking for the better part of a year, who’d funneled thousands of guns into Star City. There was no telling when they’d get another shot at him, and John and Thea would be going after him tonight with or without Oliver’s help.

He couldn’t let them do it alone.

“Do you need to go?” Felicity asked.

He did. He hated that he did, but he really did. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t important.”

“It’s fine,” Felicity said. “You don’t have to babysit me, you know.”

“I know.” He gestured at the television screen. “I’m just annoyed because we’re getting to the good part.”

She rolled her eyes. “I promise not to watch it without you. Now go. Catch a bad guy or whatever.”

✥ ✥ ✥

Four hours later, Oliver limped through the front door of the loft.

Felicity was sitting in front of the computer, and she looked up at him and smiled. “Hey,” she said, shutting the laptop. “How’d it go?”

Oliver shrugged, and then winced as pain shot down his arm from where he’d landed hard on his shoulder earlier. “We got him.”

It’d been a near thing, and there’d been a few scary moments, but they’d gotten a gunrunner off the streets of Star City and all of Oliver’s team had been on their feet at the end of the night, so he was calling it a win.

Felicity got up and came over to him. She looked at his arm, frowning. “You’re bleeding.” Her hand hovered a few inches away from his sleeve before she balled it into a fist and pulled it back.

He’d taken a slash across his right forearm in the fight. It wasn’t deep, but it was messy and it’d bled a lot. The gauze he’d hastily applied at the lair had already soaked through, staining the sleeve of his shirt. “It’s nothing,” he told her. “Just needs a fresh band-aid.”

“Looks a little big for a band-aid,” she said doubtfully. “You sure that doesn’t need stitches?”

Dig had said the same thing, back at the lair, but Oliver had waved him off. He’d been in too much of a hurry to get back to Felicity to hang around for stitches.

“A few butterfly bandages will be enough,” he said.

“Where are they?” Felicity asked. “I’ll get them.”

“First aid kit under the sink.”

Oliver collapsed into a chair at the dining table. Felicity brought the first aid kit over and sat in the chair closest to him. Close enough that their knees were touching under the table.

Gingerly, she rolled his sleeve up and peeled off the blood-soaked bandage. When she got her first glimpse of the slash along his forearm she drew in a sharp breath, the color draining from her face.

“You don’t have to do this,” Oliver said. “I can patch myself up.”

“Sort of seems like the least I could do.”

“Felicity—”

“No, it’s—it just looks painful,” she said, biting her lip. “I can do this. I mean, I assume I used to do this all the time.”

“It took you awhile to get used to it. You never liked the sight of blood.”

“Well, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed, at least.” She stared at the wound, pressing her lips together like she was psyching herself up. “Did I use to do sutures?”

“Sometimes … but let’s just stick with butterfly bandages tonight.”

She nodded, straightening her spine, and tore open an alcohol swab.

When she wrapped her hand around his arm to hold it in place while she cleaned the blood away, Oliver swallowed and looked away, suppressing a shudder.

“Am I hurting you?” she asked uncertainly.

He shook his head, because it was pleasure he was feeling, not pain, but he couldn’t exactly tell her that. “You’re doing great.”

Her forehead creased in concentration while she worked. The only sound was the distant hum of traffic on the interstate, and the blood rushing in Oliver’s ears.

Felicity’s hands shook a little as she fastened the first butterfly bandage in place, but by the time she got to the last one her movements were steady and confident. Just like old times.

When she was done she taped a fresh piece of gauze over the wound. “How’s that?” she asked, her fingers smoothing over his forearm and making his stomach do flip flops.

Oliver clenched his jaw and nodded. “Perfect.”

She got up and went to put the first aid kit away. “You need an ice pack?” she asked from the kitchen.

“That’d be great,” he said, rolling his sleeve back down. “Thanks.”

She grabbed one out of the freezer and put it in his hand. This time he couldn’t help shivering a little as her fingers brushed across his, but he figured the freezing cold ice pack made for a good cover.

“All right,” Felicity said, stifling a yawn. “Now that you’re home safe, I’m heading up to bed.” She gave him a small smile and padded upstairs.

Oliver couldn’t help smiling at her retreating figure. She’d waited up for him. Which meant she’d been worried about him. It was almost enough to make him forget about his aching muscles. Almost.

He pressed the ice pack against his shoulder, leaned back in his chair, and waited for the NSAIDs he’d taken to kick in.

✥ ✥ ✥

The next morning, over breakfast, Felicity told him that she wanted to see the lair.

Oliver set down his coffee cup and looked at her, forehead creasing. “Are you sure?”

She nodded, her fingers curling around her own mug. “It’s where you work—where _we_ worked, right? It’s an important part of my life. I need to see it.”

He couldn’t argue with that, so that afternoon he took her to the lair.

He’d given Diggle and Thea a heads-up, so they were both there waiting for them. Oliver had warned them that Felicity’s memories were patchy, that she might not remember much about them yet, that they should give her lots of space and not expect too much.

Apparently their version of giving her some space was hovering eagerly by the door with a matching pair of hopeful grins on their faces.

Not that Oliver could blame them. It was the first time they’d seen her since she’d come back from her mother’s—the first time Thea had talked to her _at all_ since she’d disappeared months ago—and they’d been hounding Oliver via text for daily updates. They’d both missed her almost as much as he had, and he knew it’d been frustrating for them to be kept at a distance, even if they understood the need.

He was watching Felicity carefully, so he saw her tense slightly when she first caught sight of them, and quickly fix a bright and only slightly brittle smile in place. “Hi,” she said in something that almost passed for a cheerful tone.

“You already met Dig at the police station, of course,” Oliver said, carefully making the introductions like they were all new acquaintances. But then he accidentally broke the no-touching rule by pressing his hand against the small of Felicity’s back. Partly out of sheer habit, because he’d always laid his hand on her back when making introductions, but also because he could sense her apprehension and it was an involuntary reflex to try to calm her nerves in social situations with a light touch. He’d done it so many times when he was running for mayor that it was second nature at this point.

He did it this time without thinking, before he even realized he was breaking the rule, and by then it was too late to take it back. He was relieved to feel Felicity actually relax a little under his hand, and even press back into him slightly.

“Hey,” Dig said, tilting his chin up and grinning a little wider.

“And this is my sister, Thea,” Oliver continued. And if his thumb stroked the curve of Felicity’s spine a little, well who could blame him?

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Thea said, her whole face lit up in a way that made her look younger and happier than she had in a long time.

Felicity’s expression lost a little of its brittleness, and her smile warmed. “You’re Speedy, right?”

Thea’s eyes widened and she nodded, beaming even brighter.

Oliver couldn’t tell if Felicity actually remembered her or not. She was so guarded about her memories she was almost impossible to read. And Oliver had told her all about Diggle and Thea, so she knew who they were even if she couldn’t remember them.

“Would it be weird—” Thea said, eyes shining. “—I mean, I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but do you think maybe I could give you a hug?”

Oliver’s eyes darted to Felicity apprehensively, but she just nodded and stepped forward.

Thea fell into her arms, and the two of them clung to each other like long lost friends. “I really, _really_ missed you,” Thea muttered, squeezing her eyes shut, and Felicity held her even tighter.

Diggle’s gaze found Oliver’s, and they shared a watery smile over their heads.

Maybe Felicity really did remember Thea? Maybe seeing her had unlocked a memory, or maybe she’d remembered her before this and that’s why she’d wanted to come to the lair. Whatever it was, Oliver was just so glad to see the two most important women in his life together again, he felt like his heart was going to burst right out of his chest.

When they finally let go of each other Felicity’s cheeks were wet, and Thea was blinking hard to try and hide her own tears.

And then Felicity looked up at Diggle, and her lip trembled a little, and she said, “Don’t you want a hug, too, John?”

Diggle positively _crumpled,_ and he stumbled forward, wrapping Felicity up in his arms. His eyes squeezed shut and he bent his head, pressing his face into her hair.

Oliver sucked in a ragged breath and smiled down at his shoes. It felt like something that was broken had finally been fixed, like snapping a bike chain back onto the gears.

Thea moved to his side, bumping him with her shoulder, and Oliver wrapped his arm around her and tugged her close.

This was right. It was everything. The four of them together again. His team. His _family._

This was exactly the way it was supposed to be.

When Felicity finally let go of Diggle they were both laughing and wiping the tears from their eyes, and Oliver tried to remember the last time anyone had actually laughed in the lair. Surely not since the last time Felicity had been down here.

Her eyes found his, her expression full of … something. He couldn’t tell what, exactly, but whatever it was, it was definitely good, because she was still smiling and her eyes were bright and shining and it hit him hard, right beneath his ribcage.

But then she looked away, her gaze wandering around the lair, taking it all in. Really seeing it for the first time. Oliver watched her closely, trying to decipher her expression. Was it familiar? Did she feel like she belonged here? Did she _want_ to belong here?

Felicity’s eyes zeroed in on her old computer workstation, and she walked toward it, the smile sliding from her face. Everyone watched in breathless silence as she climbed up onto the platform.

She ran her hand over the back of the chair, and then pulled it out and sat down. Her hands gripped the arms and she spun to face the monitors, leaning forward slightly.

A smile spread slowly across her face. “I built this,” she said, laying her palms reverently on the console. “This was mine.”

Oliver ducked his head and squeezed his eyes shut. He felt Thea’s fingernails dig into his forearm excitedly, and heard John’s long exhalation of relief on his other side as a feeling of pure elation filled Oliver’s chest. He felt lighter than air. Like if he wasn’t wearing shoes he might actually float up off the floor.

Felicity was back where she belonged. She was theirs again.

They ended up spending the whole rest of the day at the lair. Felicity wanted to see everything, to see how it all worked, how it was put together, to know what parts of it she’d designed herself. She wanted to touch everything. Open things up and poke around the insides, take things apart and put them back together.

When it started getting late, Thea went out for takeout and came back with Belly Busters for everyone. The four of them sat around the conference table, sucking on milkshakes and reminiscing. Laughing and telling stories, just like old times. Like the good parts of the old times, when they could actually take a minute to breathe and enjoy each other’s company.

When they finally said their goodbyes there was more hugging, but less crying. Oliver felt more hopeful, more at peace, than he’d let himself feel in a long time.

The temperature had dropped to just above freezing and there was a scent of snow in the air when they stepped out into the parking lot behind his old campaign office. Felicity was quiet on the drive home, staring out the window with her face slightly turned away, her breath steaming up the glass.

“You okay?” Oliver asked, worried that maybe it was a little too much for her, that she was struggling more than she’d let on.

She turned to look at him and smiled, a real smile that reached all the way to her eyes for a change. “Yeah,” she said. “I am, actually.”

“I’m glad,” Oliver said.

She turned back to the window. They were on the Speer Elevated heading toward downtown, with the skyline rising up in front of them and the bay stretching out on their right. “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” she said.

“It can be,” Oliver said. He’d seen far too much of the city’s underbelly to agree unreservedly, but Star City would always own a piece of his heart. It was home.

“I hated it when I first came here,” she admitted. “I thought it was too rainy. Too damp. Too grimy. Compared to Switzerland, it seemed … well, awful, honestly.”

“I guess I can understand that,” Oliver allowed.

“It’s not so bad, though, when you get to know it.”

“No,” he agreed, smiling at the skyscrapers in front of them. “It’s not.”

It was after eleven when they got back to the loft. Oliver wandered into the kitchen, looking for something to do. Way too keyed up to sleep. “You want some ice cream?” he asked, staring into the freezer.

“No, I’m beat,” Felicity said, hooking her thumb over her shoulder. “I think I’m just going to head up to bed.”

“Okay,” he said, shutting the freezer. He didn’t really feel like eating ice cream alone.

She lingered near the bottom of the stairs. Not going up to bed. “Today was a good day.”

He wandered closer, but not _too_ close, ever conscious of her personal space. “I thought so, too.”

“You were right,” she said.

“About what?”

She tipped her head back and smiled. “It’s getting better.”

His heartbeat quickened. Before his brain could form a response, Felicity stepped into him and wrapped her arms around his torso.

“Everyone else got hugs today,” she said, laying her head against his chest. “You deserve one, too.”

Oliver closed his eyes. He didn’t trust himself to speak, much less to move. All he could do was stand there hoping the moment would go on forever.

It didn’t, of course.

She pulled away with a murmured, “Goodnight,” and headed up to bed.

Oliver watched her disappear up the stairs, a stupid grin plastered on his face.

She’d said it was getting better.

Today _was_ a good day. A great fucking day. And hopefully tomorrow would be another.

He couldn’t wait.

✥ ✥ ✥

Tomorrow started sooner than Oliver expected.

It was a little after 2 a.m. when he was awakened from a dead sleep by the sound of Felicity crying out.

A knife-blade of panic sliced through him and he bolted out into the hallway, every nerve ending on high alert. He could hear her whimpering inside her room, and he didn’t hesitate even a second before throwing open the door.

As soon as he saw that she was alone and unharmed he let out a ragged breath, swallowing down the bitter taste of adrenaline in the back of his throat. She was asleep, caught in the throes of a nightmare, her body twitching as she struggled against some invisible terror.

“Felicity?” he said quietly, but she didn’t wake, so he went over to the bed and laid a hand on her arm.

She shot upright at his touch, chest heaving, her eyes wide and full of terror.

“Hey,” he said gently. “Hey, it’s okay. You were having a nightmare.”

“Oliver?” she said in a small voice, and her hand reached out, feeling for him in the dark.

“Yeah, it’s just me,” he said, clasping her hand and perching on the edge of the bed.

She fell forward into his arms, burying her face in his chest.

His arms tightened around her protectively. He could feel her trembling against him and he held her even closer. “You’re okay,” he murmured, stroking her hair. “You’re okay, it was just a dream.”

She shook her head, still nestled against him. “It wasn’t, though. It really happened. I remember it.”

Oliver went still. “What? Felicity, what happened?”

“You died,” she whispered. “You left and went away and we thought you’d died. There was a sword with your blood on it.”

_Jesus._

If there was any memory he’d rather she not get back it was that one. It was just too goddamn cruel that she had to relive that all over again. The bad memories had to come back along with the good ones, though, he supposed. Two steps forward, one step back.

Fuck Noah. Fuck him hard, with a rusty shovel. Rotting in a supermax prison for the rest of his life wasn’t nearly punishment enough for what he’d done to her.

“It’s okay,” Oliver said, rubbing his hand up and down Felicity’s back. “I didn’t die. I came back. I’m right here.”

Her arms tightened around him, and he felt her inhale a ragged breath. Then she pushed herself away and sat up, her hands twisting in her lap.

“I’m so sorry you had to remember that,” Oliver said, agonized. “I’m sorry you ever had to live through it in the first place.”

She looked up at him with tear-stained eyes and shook her head. “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to keep apologizing for things that are in the past.”

He felt his face twist and he sucked in an unsteady breath, unable to look away from her. “I really do.”

She reached for his hand, tangling her fingers with his. “Stay with me tonight.”

His heart flew into his throat. “Felicity—”

“I know what I’m asking,” she said quietly. “I just want you to hold me. I don’t want to be alone. Please.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and his heart cracked along with it.

“Of course,” he said, swallowing hard. Powerless to say anything else to her but yes.

_Yes, anything you need. Always._

Felicity scooted over to make room for him in the bed and turned onto her side with her back was to him. Carefully, Oliver slipped under the sheets and curled his body around hers. They fit together perfectly, like two halves of the same whole. They always had.

“Is this okay?” he asked, draping his arm over her waist.

She covered his hand with hers and pressed it against her belly. “Perfect,” she murmured, sighing against him.

Oliver closed his eyes and breathed deep, feeling all the tension drain out of his body. Being without her had been like missing an appendage, but now, with her body warm against his, he felt complete. Whole again, for the first time in months. This was where he belonged. It was everything he’d ever wanted.

He snuggled a little closer, soaking up the feeling of perfect contentment. Listening to the gradual slowing of her breathing as she drifted off to sleep in his arms.

Never, ever wanting to let go.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder that I've upped the content rating to explicit for this chapter. You've been warned. ;) After this one there's just a short epilogue left and since it's not a full chapter I'll try to get it posted in the next day or two.

Oliver came awake with sunlight in his eyes and Felicity’s hair in his nose. She was still asleep, still pressed flush against him. His hand was splayed over her hip, his thumb grazing bare skin just above the waistband of her pajama pants.

He shifted slightly, burrowing his face deeper into her hair, breathing in the sweet scent of her. Still not quite believing this was real. Afraid to move for fear of losing it all over again.

But then he heard her breathing change, and he gingerly slipped his hand off her hip. He felt her body come awake next to him him, felt her muscles contract as they shifted into wakefulness. Felt her tense slightly with awareness of him.

He stayed stock still, waiting to see what she would she would do. Whether she would pull away from him.

She did, but only enough to roll onto her back and stretch, catlike. And then she turned her head, her eyes finding his, and she smiled shyly. “Morning.”

“Morning,” he said, smiling back. The urge to reach out and cup her cheek in his hand was almost too strong to resist. He wanted to trace the line of her jaw with his fingertips, run his thumb over her lips, feel her pulse beating against his skin. But he wasn’t sure he had the right yet, so he held himself back.

“Did you sleep okay?” she asked, turning onto her side to face him and tucking her hands underneath her pillow.

“Better than I have in a long time,” he said honestly.

“Me too,” she said.

“Do you have nightmares a lot?” he asked, frowning slightly.

“Not a lot,” she said. “But some. Too much.”

He did reach for her then, his hand skimming lightly over her shoulder and down her arm. “I didn’t know.”

The corner of her mouth twisted. “That’s because I didn’t tell you.”

He wanted to tell her that she could always tell him about her nightmares, that she could tell him _anything,_ but he figured she knew that by now, she didn’t need to be told. Instead he squeezed her elbow gently and said nothing at all.

Her eyes drifted closed briefly, and then she took a breath. “I want to thank you for last night.”

“Felicity, you don’t have to—”

“I know,” she said, cutting him off. “But I _want_ to. I want you to know that I’m not taking you for granted. That I can see how hard all of this has been for you, and how much of an effort you’re making. That I appreciate it. That I appreciate _you._ ”

His heart was hammering in his chest and he didn’t trust himself not to kiss her if she kept looking at him the way she was looking at him, so he pushed himself upright and threw back the covers. “I have something for you,” he said.

Because her nightmares had made him think of it, and because he thought maybe it was time, finally. That she was ready to see it. That he was ready to share it with her.

“Oliver, what—?” She broke off, laughing, as he clambered over her to get to the other side of the bed, the side that used to be his.

He perched on the edge of the mattress and pulled open the bedside drawer, digging around at the back until he came up with a small notebook. “Here,” he said, twisting around to hand it to her.

She sat up, turning it over in her hand. “What is it?”

“It’s a journal. It’s my journal.”

He’d started it when they were living in Ivy Town. At first it had been therapy, of a sort. A place to write down all the memories that haunted him and kept him up at night. A way to exorcise some of his demons. A way of confronting them instead of choking on them.

But then he’d started writing about other things, too. The things that he and Felicity had done together, how being with her made him feel, all his hopes for their future together—and his fears of disappointing her. He’d bared his soul on those pages, to an extent that he’d never fully been able to express to her out loud.

He’d told her he loved, of course, a thousand times in a thousand different ways, but he wasn’t a poet or an orator, he didn’t have the vocabulary to convey the depth of his passion with any eloquence—or the courage to expose his own insecurities, even to her. The clumsy words he’d scrawled in that journal were his undereducated attempts to articulate exactly what Felicity meant to him, in a way he could never bring himself to say to her face. It was a record of all his most sacred, private thoughts, as well as his sins.

She’d known about the journal before, of course—she was the one who’d given him the idea in the first place—but she’d never asked to see it. And he’d never offered. Until now.

Felicity looked at him, her brows drawing together. “Are you sure?”

He wasn’t, not 100 percent, but he nodded anyway. Swallowed. “I want you to.”

Her hands clenched around the journal and she brought it up to her chest, pressing it against her heart. “Thank you,” she said softly, her eyes gleaming as she looked up at him.

It had taken pretty much all the courage Oliver had to put that journal in her hands, and he didn’t have enough left to face her now that he’d done it. So he did the only thing he could do: he got the hell out of there.

“I’m, um, I’m just going to go for a run,” he stammered, standing up and making for the door.

“Okay,” she said, already cracking open the journal and flipping to the first page.

Oliver ran.

He went for a ten-mile run, west to the riverfront and then up to the base of Star Bridge before circling around the botanical gardens and back into midtown. The temperature had dropped below freezing overnight, and he pulled his cap down low over his ears and let the cold burn his lungs until it was all he could feel.

When he finally ventured back to the loft, Felicity was still upstairs, locked in her room with the door closed. Presumably still reading his journal.

Oliver took the longest, hottest shower he could stand, and then collapsed onto the bed to cool off. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about Felicity at the other end of the hall, reading his journal. Judging him. Pitying him. Probably at that very moment.

A few minutes later there was a knock on his door, so quiet that at first he wasn’t sure if he’d actually heard it or if he’d imagined it. Until he heard Felicity say, “Oliver? Can I come in?”

“Yeah,” he said, sitting up and running a nervous hand through his damp hair. “Come on in.”

Only after the door opened did he remember he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Felicity didn’t seem to notice, though. Her eyes zeroed in on his face and she smiled shyly. “Hey.” She’d changed into a pair of jeans and his old sweater, and he couldn’t help wondering if she’d remembered yet that it was his.

He swallowed. “Hey.”

She took a few steps into the room. “Can I … ?” She gestured at the edge of the bed.

“Sure, of course,” he said, scooting over to make more room for her. God, why was he so full of dread? His stomach was all tied up in knots like he’d just been sent to the principal’s office.

Felicity sat down on the edge of the mattress. “I, um …” She trailed off, laughing nervously, and shook her head. “There’s so much I want to say to you, I don’t even know where to start.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Oliver said quickly. “We don’t have to talk about it all.”

“No, I want to, I just … it’s a lot, you know?”

He stared down at his lap, unable to look her in the eye. “Yeah.”

“The fact that you would share something like that with me … much less that you felt all of it in the first place …” She paused, and he heard her blow out a shaky breath. “It just makes me love you even more.”

Oliver’s head jerked up, his heart stuttering to a stop. “What?”

“I love you,” Felicity said, simply and clearly. “I should have told you sooner, but I didn’t know how. I was scared, I guess. You’ve been so careful with me since I came back, so considerate and attentive, and I just—all week I’ve wanted to reach out to you, to feel your arms around me again. But after what happened before, I didn’t trust my own feelings. I was afraid of leading you on again—”

“Felicity, you didn’t—”

“Except yeah, I kind of did, though,” she insisted, shaking her head. “And ever since that _incredibly_ awkward, totally regrettable moment of self-doubt I’ve been trying to work up the courage to tell you how I really feel—” Her eyes locked onto his and she inhaled an unsteady breath. “That I’ve been falling a little more in love with you every day.”

Oliver’s vision blurred as his eyes filled with tears. He tried to say her name but his throat had closed up and all that came out was a sort of choked sob.

But then she was leaning toward him and he surged forward, meeting her halfway, reaching out for her. Desperate to hold her.

Her hands came up to cradle his face as their lips met. She kissed him gently, with incredible tenderness, her hands slowly sliding down his throat and coming to rest on his shoulders. And then her lips parted and she shifted toward him, opening herself up to him. Her mouth was warm and soft and it tasted like perfect happiness.

“Felicity,” he gasped, breath hitching.

Her hands came back to his face and she gazed at him with a half-smile playing on her lips and her eyes so clear and bright and full of love that he almost couldn’t breathe. “Oliver,” she whispered, her lips just a hairsbreadth from his.

“Say it again,” he begged, his hands curling into her hips, pulling her closer. Needing her closer.

“I love you,” she said, and placed a kiss on the corner of his jaw. “I love you.” Another kiss, on the tip of his chin. “I love you, Oliver.” Her mouth slid down his throat, and her tongue teased a path along his collarbone.

He closed his eyes—dizzy and overwhelmed and just so goddamn _relieved—_ and let his head fall forward as she left a trail of kisses across his chest. This was real, it was happening. She _loved_ him. Felicity loved him again.

A moment later he felt her still, and he heard her take a shuddering breath. Oliver opened his eyes to find her gazing at the fresh bullet wound in his left shoulder, which was still pink and raw. Her eyes were shining, her expression agonized as she reached out to run her fingertips over the newly-healed scar. “I shot you. I can’t believe—oh god, Oliver, I’m so sorry.”

“Hey,” he said, pulling her into his lap. “It’s okay.”

Felicity shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. “It’s not, it’s like the furthest possible thing from okay. I mean … I _shot_ you. I could have killed you.”

He pressed his hand against her cheek, wiping away her tears with his thumb. “But you didn’t. It was just a flesh wound, and if it helped bring you back to me, it was worth it.”

“I still can’t believe I did that. It feels like it was another person who did all those things, except I can remember doing it, clear as day.”

Oliver pressed his lips against her temple. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be shot by than you.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” she asked, huffing out a faint laugh.

He shrugged. “To be honest, the pepper spray hurt a lot worse than the bullet.”

“Oh, god!” she groaned, tipping her head forward against his chest.

“Hey, I’m just kidding,” he said, running his hands over her back. “None of it was your fault, and you’re not allowed to feel guilty.”

“Yeah, like that’s gonna work. Ordering me not to feel guilty.”

He kissed the top of her head, tangling his fingers in her hair. “I figured it was worth a try.”

She laid her palm on his chest to push herself upright, shifting her hips to settle herself more comfortably in his lap. Her eyes drifted down to his chest and her hand moved to the scar below his right pectoral. “That’s where the sword went in.”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

Her fingers traced the ridge of scar tissue. “You thought I was dead, didn’t you? All that time I was gone, it was like when I thought Ra’s had killed you.”

He placed his hand over hers, pressing it against his chest. “I didn’t want to believe it, but after a while, it was hard not to. I was afraid I’d never find out what had happened to you, that I’d spend the rest of my life wondering.”

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

Oliver shook his head. “Don’t ever be sorry. After everything you’ve been through, I just—” He looked up at her, his expression pained. “Felicity, I’m never going to be able to forgive myself for letting him do that to you. For not being able to save you.”

She pursed her lips. “And now it’s my turn to order you not to feel guilty.”

“I thought we’d already established that won’t work.”

“Figured it was worth a try,” she said, smiling.

He leaned forward and kissed her, reveling in the simple fact that he could. Savoring the familiar taste of her, the softness of her lips, the warmth of her mouth.

Felicity’s hand came up to cup his cheek briefly, and then she pushed him back onto the bed and tucked herself up against his side, resting her head on his shoulder. Oliver wrapped his arm around her and pressed his face into the top of her head, breathing her in. “I could stay like this forever.”

“Mmmm, me too,” she murmured, nestling against him. Her hand settled on his chest, right above his heart, and her thumb idly stroked a path across his skin.

They laid there like that in contented silence for a while, basking in the newly regained closeness between them. Letting it sink in.

“Can I ask you something?” Oliver said eventually, when he’d worked up the nerve.

“Hmmm?” Felicity hummed contentedly.

“How much do you actually remember?”

Her hand stilled on his chest for a moment. “It’s hard to say exactly, since I don’t exactly know what I don’t know, you know? And wow, that sounds confusing and a little bit crazy when I put it like that, but—”

“I know what you mean,” he told her, his arm tightening around her.

She sighed softly. “There are still some pretty big gaps, but I remember a lot. And I’m remembering more every day. Like, for instance, I remember that you got _this_ scar when you saved me from Count Vertigo,” she said, running her finger over the small scar on his left arm.

Oliver smiled to himself. He’d told her the story a few days ago, about the night Count Vertigo had taken her. How scared he’d been when he got the phone call, and how brave she’d been afterwards. But he’d left out the part where he’d been grazed by one of the Count’s bullets. She’d remembered that all on her own.

“And I remember this one very clearly,” she said as she traced the quarter-sized scar beneath his collarbone, “because it’s where your mother shot you the night I found you bleeding in the back of my car.”

Weirdly, that one was actually a pleasant memory for him now, despite how terrible and traumatic it had been at the time. Because that was the night that had changed everything between them. The night Felicity had discovered the truth about him and agreed to become his partner. The first step on their journey together.

Her hand skimmed across his breastbone, pausing on the ragged mass of scar tissue left by Yao Fei’s arrow. “And I remember you telling me about this one,” she said. “About how it was the first scar you got on the island, and how you believed it made you into a stronger version of yourself.”

He’d made that confession in the dark of a long ago stormy night in Ivy Town, when the thunder and lightning had set his heart racing, and she’d held him in her arms and run her fingernails over his scalp to soothe him.

“You do remember a lot,” Oliver said, his voice coming out a little thick.

“But I can’t remember anything about this one,” she said as her hand moved to the long, diagonal gash across his ribcage that Billy Wintergreen had left him with.

“It’s from the island.”

“Did you ever tell me about it?”

“I told you about all of them … eventually.”

She pressed a kiss into his chest. “I remember that you don’t like to talk to about what happened to you on the island.”

He squeezed her shoulder gently. “I _used_ to not like to talk about it. But I don’t mind anymore. Not with you.”

“What about this one?” she said, her fingers traveling down to the arc of puncture wounds at his hip.

“I got that on the island, too.”

“Yeah, but how?” she asked, raising her head to study it more closely. “What could do something like that? It almost looks like a bite mark. Like an insanely big bite mark.”

His mouth twisted into a smirk. “That’s because it is.”

“What?” She narrowed her gaze, not quite believing him. “No, it’s not. What kind of animal could leave a bite that big?”

“A shark.”

Felicity blinked at him, her blue eyes wide and sparkling. “You were bitten by a shark? Are you kidding? That’s awesome.”

He huffed out a soft laugh. “It didn’t feel awesome at the time, I can tell you that.”

“Well, yeah, I suppose not. But it’s pretty cool looking now.” She traced the trail of toothmarks that started above his hipbone and disappeared under his sweatpants.

Oliver shuddered involuntarily as her fingers dipped low on his abdomen, grazing the edge of his waistband before reversing direction. A smile curved her mouth at his reaction, and she trailed her fingers down low once again, this time traveling along the edge of his sweatpants below his navel.

“Felicity,” he groaned.

When she leaned over him and pressed her mouth against the shark bite, it took every ounce of willpower he had to hold himself still beneath her. She laughed against his skin, clearly very much aware of what she was doing to him, and then she swung her leg over him and pushed herself upright, straddling his thighs

Oliver gave up trying to hold himself back and surged upward, his hands capturing her face and his mouth seeking out hers. Their kisses were messy and rough this time, fueled by fresh eagerness and desire. Their tongues slid together, their breath coming in short, fevered gasps as their hands roamed everywhere they could reach. He moaned as her teeth grazed his lower lip, which only inspired Felicity to bite down, hard enough to make him gasp.

Laughing, she pushed him back onto the bed and gazed down at him, drinking him in. His hands settled comfortably on her ass, holding her in place, relishing the weight of her on his thighs.

“I love your beard,” she said, leaning forward to touch his face, her fingernails curling into his stubble. “Did I always love your beard?”

His mouth twisted into a smile. “You may have mentioned it once or twice in the past.”

Felicity kissed him again, hard and quick, and then sat back and pulled her sweater ( _his_ sweater) off over her head—and _Jesus,_ she wasn’t wearing a bra, and her breasts were just as gorgeous and perfect as he remembered. Oliver wanted to hold them in his hands, to put his mouth on them. He wanted to _devour_ them.

But he held himself back. Terrified, still, of moving too fast. Of making another mistake with her.

“Felicity,” he breathed, dragging his eyes from her breasts up to her face. “We don’t have to rush into anything yet. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

Instead of answering, she lifted one of his hands off her ass and placed it on her breast.

So, okay, then, apparently this was what she wanted.

Oliver cupped her breast lovingly in his palm and dragged the pad of his thumb over her nipple, circling the hardening nub. Felicity’s eyes fluttered closed, and she threw her head back and made a needy sound halfway between a gasp and whine.

It was too much to resist, that sound. He needed to be closer to it. To make her do it again. He arched upward and sealed his mouth over her breast. She moaned—which wasn’t the same sound, exactly, but was maybe even better—and pressed against him greedily, her fingernails digging into his shoulders.

When he took her nipple between his teeth and sucked she ground against him, just like he knew she would. He’d mapped every inch of her body and knew exactly what she liked best. How to play her like a musical instrument, how to make her beg for him, until she was completely at his mercy.

But he wasn’t going to do that, not this time. He was going to follow her lead and let her set the pace, just like he had the first time they’d made love.

So he eased off, pressing a trail of soothing kisses to her heated skin before lying back against the pillows again. Felicity huffed in frustration and gazed down at him with hungry eyes.

Oliver silently quirked an eyebrow at her, both a question and a challenge.

The sly smile she gave him in answer set his pulse racing. Her hand glided slowly over his torso and down to his abs. And then she hooked her fingers around his waistband and dragged his pants and underwear down, off his hips, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as he sprang free.

Oliver forced himself to stay still, to wait for her to tell him what she wanted. But when she wrapped her hand around him his resolve melted away to nothing and he arched his back underneath her, gasping her name. Helpless at her touch.

She leaned forward, still holding him in her hand, and pressed her mouth to his. “I want you,” she murmured, nipping at his lower lip, “inside me. Now.”

Oliver didn’t need to be told twice. His fingers deftly unfastened the button of her jeans and dragged the zipper down. Felicity helped him out by wriggling them off her hips and then rolling onto her back, peeling off her pants and her underwear.

“Off,” she ordered, plucking at Oliver’s sweatpants, which were still bunched around his thighs.

He complied readily, dragging them the rest of the way down his legs and kicking them off. And then he rolled onto his side and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her flush against him, bare skin against bare skin. He kissed her slowly and deeply, in no hurry, but she hummed against his mouth impatiently and then pushed him onto his back again and climbed on top of him.

God, she looked radiant with her chest flushed and her eyes sparking with desire, so beautiful it stole the breath from his lungs. Oliver’s hand came up to her face, cupping it tenderly. “I love you,” he said, overwhelmed by a wave of fierce affection. “I love you so much.”

Felicity’s expression softened and she turned her head to press a kiss into his palm. “I love you, too,” she murmured before taking him in her hand again and lowering herself onto him.

Oliver held himself still, letting her take him in as slowly as she needed to, his eyes never leaving her face. Appreciating every moment. Felicity’s eyes fluttered closed and her mouth fell open, her lips rosy and plump. As he slid all the way in she bit down on her lower lip and wriggled her hips, settling herself around him.

It was— _fuck_ —it was all he could do not to come right then and there. It’d been so long and he’d thought he’d lost this forever. He’d dreamed of it, _ached_ for it, and now that it was happening it would be so easy to let go and lose himself in her. But no way was he going to let that happen, so he clenched his teeth and held fast to the fraying threads of his control.

“You okay?” he asked, spreading his palms out on her back.

“Mmmm hmmm,” she replied, and started to move.

His hips bucked as she clenched around him, and his fingers curled into her lower back. God, she felt amazing. So hot and slick. So tight.

Oliver arched his back and circled his hips, and Felicity sucked in a sharp breath as he matched his rhythm to hers. They moved in unison, slow and steady, enjoying the feel of each other. Getting used to having this again.

“Fuck,” he moaned. “Fuck, I missed this.” It was ecstasy, being being physically connected like this. Buried inside of her, surrounded by her. Every nerve ending in his body was aflame with sensation and he didn’t know how much longer he was going to be able to hold out.

Fortunately, he could already feel her movements beginning to grow more urgent, her muscles clenching with the telltale signs of tension coiling inside her. He ran his hands down the backs of her thighs and then up again, his fingers digging into her ass as he urged her to go harder, faster, his hips rising up to meet hers.

“Oh!” she gasped at the increased pressure. “Oh _god._ Yes, that’s it. Please, just—more.” Her hands were braced on his shoulders, her breath coming in short bursts, her fingernails biting into his skin. She was so close, trembling with exertion.

Oliver lifted her up and slammed her down on him. Once. Twice. On the third time she threw her head back and cried out his name.

Her orgasm pulsated around him, nearly driving him over the edge, but he set his jaw and gentled his movements, coaxing her through it and drawing out her pleasure. Stroking her back her as her breathing slowed and her shoulders sagged bonelessly.

“Wow,” she said, tipping her head forward and smiling at him. “That was … wow.”

Oliver pushed himself upright and wrapped his arms around her, gathering into his chest. She leaned into him and pressed her forehead against his, their breath mingling and their noses rubbing.

“I love you,” he whispered, kissing her. “So much.”

“Love you,” she whispered. Her arms came up around his shoulders and her fingers slid into his hair, curling at the nape of his neck and sending shivers down his spine.

He rubbed his hands over the smooth planes of her back and down to her hips. Carefully, he lifted her legs, one at a time, and brought them around his waist so she’d be more comfortable.

Felicity hummed approvingly at the change of angle, and then clenched around him, drawing a groan from him. Oliver rocked his hips, driving up into her, and she hissed with pleasure, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he moved inside her.

It was intimate and intense, their bodies completely wrapped up in each other, so close it was impossible to tell where she ended and he began.

“Oliver,” she breathed, her mouth moving to his ear. “You feel so good.”

“Felicity,” he groaned, trembling against her. His heart was overflowing with joy, with love for this woman. With gratitude that he had been given this gift, that he’d gotten her back. “I missed you, Felicity. God, I missed you so much.”

“I know,” she murmured, and held him tighter as they rocked together. “I’m here now. I’m yours, Oliver. You don’t have to hold back anymore.”

A shudder traveled through him. He dropped his head against her shoulder and finally let himself go.

It hit him hard, crashing over him like a storm surge, carrying him away on a wave of euphoria, leaving his muscles weak and quivering and his eyes burning with tears.

Felicity rocked him through it, dragging her fingernails over his scalp in soothing circles. “I’m here,” she whispered, over and over. “I’m here, I’m right here.”

✥ ✥ ✥

Felicity was naked. Oliver was too, but that was beside the point.

All that Oliver cared about at this particular moment was that Felicity was in his arms, naked. Her head resting on his chest and her body curled around his. In their home.

He’d be perfectly happy to stay here like this—just exactly like this—forever.

“So that was pretty awesome,” Felicity said, nestling against him.

His arms instinctively tightened around her. “Yeah.” The warmth of her body soaked into his skin and traveled straight to his heart, making him feel weightless and pure.

“We should probably do it again sometime.”

“Probably?” He tried to sound affronted but he was far too happy to successfully pull it off.

“Definitely,” she corrected, a smile in her voice. “We should _definitely_ do it again.”

“That’s more like it.” He pressed his face into her hair and inhaled. The fruity scent of her shampoo filled his senses, and for the first time in six months he felt no tension, no fear, no regret. Just peace.

“Do you have to be anywhere today?” she asked.

“Nowhere. Nowhere except right here with you.”

“Mmm good,” she said. And then: “You know what else we should do?”

“Hmmm?” He was thinking about kissing her, trying to decide if it would be worth moving her off his chest in order to do it. He liked having her on his chest. But he also liked kissing her. It was a quandary.

“Go on a second date.”

“Okay,” he agreed without hesitation. “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t care, as long as I’m with you. For the rest of my life.”

Oliver made up his mind, rolled her over onto her back, and kissed her.

Her lips were velvety soft, and they tasted like home. Like safety.

Like forever.

 


	12. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, y’all! The very last update, and it’s a short one. I can’t tell you all how grateful I am to everyone who’s been reading along and cheering me on. Your response to this story has absolutely blown me away! You guys are the greatest, thank you so much for coming on this ride with me. As ever, special thanks to MachaSWicket for all the encouragement and hand-holding along the way, particularly on these last few chapters.
> 
> Oh, and on further consideration, and at the suggestion of a commenter, I've downgraded the rating to Mature. I'm honestly not super clear on the difference between Mature and Explicit, but I think maybe Mature is more appropriate for this particular story. And if anyone happens to think of any tags they feel like I should include, feel free to drop a suggestion into the comments and I'll take them under advisement.

“Felicity, are you ready yet?” Oliver called through the bathroom door. “It’s time. Past time, as a matter of fact.”

“Just a minute,” she called back.

He paced across the floor of their rented bungalow. Checked his pockets once more, making sure for the one-thousandth time that he had his room key and the rings. Glanced at his watch again. “They’re not gonna wait forever, you know. And I’m sure you look—”

The door opened, and Felicity stepped out of the bathroom.

“—beautiful,” he breathed.

She ducked her head, her hand coming up to touch her hair. “Really?”

She was wearing a gauzy white sundress and her hair was pulled back and twisted into a knot at the back of her neck with a few delicate tendrils spilling out around her face. She’d gone back to blonde a month ago, and her skin was glowing and sun-kissed from the beach yesterday. She was like a ray of unfiltered sunshine—the light in the room seemed softer and more golden, just by virtue of her being there.

“Felicity,” he said, taking an uneven breath, moving closer. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She gave him a soft smile. “You don’t look so bad yourself, mister.” Her tone was light but he couldn’t help noticing how her fingers plucked nervously at her skirt.

“Hey,” he said softly, reaching for her hand. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you? Because if you are we don’t have to—”

“No,” she said firmly, squeezing his fingers. “No second thoughts. Or third thoughts, either. I’m ready for this. _So_ ready.”

“Okay,” he said uncertainly. “But …?”

She blew out an unsteady breath. “It’s just nerves—but the good kind, you know? Anticipatory nerves. I mean, this huge, you know? This is forever.”

“It is,” he said solemnly.

She looked up at him through her lashes. “Aren’t you even a little nervous?” She was barefoot—they both were—and the top of her head barely even reached his shoulders.

He brought her hand up and held it against his chest, so she could feel the way his heart was pounding. “You feel that?”

She nodded, smiling.

“It’s all for you,” he said. Her smiled widened, and he bent down, tilting his head—

“Hey, no kissing!” she said, batting him away. “Not until after.”

He huffed in frustration. “I kissed you thirty minutes ago.”

“That was before I put on the dress. No kissing in the dress until it’s official.”

“Fine, then let’s go make it official,” he said, and herded her out of their beachfront bungalow.

It was only two hours past dawn, and the sun was hanging low and soft in the east, casting its muted yellow rays over the water. Oliver turned his face into the ocean breeze and inhaled a lungful of salty air.

Hard to believe now that the sound of the sea used to make him flinch. That it used to make his pulse pound and his stomach clench in dread.

Not anymore. Now it filled him with a feeling peace, because it reminded him of Felicity. On their first trip to Bali three years ago she’d given this back to him, made it possible for him to enjoy the beauty of it again.

When he smelled sea air now it didn’t remind him of the _Gambit_ or the horrors of Lian Yu, it reminded him of Felicity’s laughter as warm waves crashed against her legs, of her hand in his as they walked along the beach at sunset. Of lying safe in her arms with the soft roar of the surf lulling him into a peaceful sleep.

This beach was one of Oliver’s favorite places on earth, which made it the perfect place for their wedding.

There was pergola set up on the sand, down by the water, and the officiant the resort had arranged stood beneath it, along with the concierge and the wedding coordinator, who would be their only witnesses.

They hadn’t told anyone they were planning this. They’d been so afraid of jinxing it, they’d hardly even talked about it between themselves once they’d made the decision.

But now they were here. They’d made it. It was happening at last. It was real.

A new start. A new life. All their dreams come true.

“My mother’s going to be so pissed,” Felicity said, following his gaze to the small party waiting for them on the beach.

“No, she’s not,” Oliver replied, smiling. “She’s going to be overjoyed.”

Felicity laughed. “I think you’re underestimating my mother’s capacity to be happy and pissed at the same time.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. His eyes locked on hers. “But it’ll be worth it.”

“Are you ready to do this?” Felicity asked, smiling up at him.

Oliver beamed back at her. “I’ve never been readier for anything in my whole life.”

“Well, then, let’s go, Mr. Smoak.”

“After you, Mrs. Queen.”

She slipped her hand into his, and they walked down the beach toward their happily ever after.

 

♥︎ THE END ♥︎

 


End file.
